Today was a “quickie” visit to St. Martin; I started the day by renting a car in Grand Case and driving to Marigot in order to clear in and clear out at the same time, then a short stop at the local Jeanneau dealer where a replacement part from Jeanneau France should have been waiting for me, but it hadn’t arrived and I’ll have to take that up with Jeanneau directly. After that I got some minor items for the boat, including some “pickling” solution for the water maker so that nothing will grow inside it during storage and some tarpaulins at the hardware store.
Then came my main reason for stopping on St. Martin – a trip to Philipsburg and Front Street in order to shop around for the best price on a new Nikon D7100 frame, which I really wanted as a second camera body. My current camera, the Nikon D7000, is still much better than I am and I’ll need a long time before I can use that camera to its fullest extent, but the lure of new technology and a more sensitive system (both in terms of mega pixels and light) got the best of me and I’ll take the new camera with me back to Europe and keep the original for the Caribbean and for diving. I visited 6 stores and chose the one with the best price and came away a happy new camera owner. That happiness was somewhat ameliorated by the realization that neither my Windows system nor my Photoshop editor was able to process the new Nikon Raw format files. But I’m sure that Nikon will come out with drivers in the near future.
After getting a monster-sized T-Bone steak (see tomorrow’s blog for pictures of the finished steak) and some smaller supply items I returned to Grand Case and returned the car and prepared for an early departure the next day by having an early small dinner at Calmos Café.
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