I woke up at 06:00 at first light and all of the boats in the anchorage were pointed in different directions as there wasn’t even a breath of wind. I soon got going and I’m writing these words while still about 30 miles away from St. Martin. I haven’t put up the sails since the wind, what little there is, is dead on the nose and I’m motoring along at 2000 RPM doing about 7-7.5 knots according to the GPS; I believe I’m bucking a 1 knot current or so. Nothing memorable has happened apart from a very strange and interesting looking rainbow which was more of a “blob” than an arc and was only visible for a short period of time at sea level and I’m afraid the pictures don’t do it credit.
I had forgotten that today is Tuesday, which means that the Grand Case anchorage is going to be very full and loud because of the street carnival, so I’m going to hop into Friar’s Bay for the night and it looks like I’m going to arrive there at about 17:00 with plenty of light to anchor and perhaps enough time to do a round of the anchorage on the paddle board.
The current was stronger than I’d thought and my speed went down to below 7 knots for about an hour when a strange wave pattern had set in and I actually ended up pounding into seas, but that only lasted an hour but I wasn’t going to adjust the throttle to make up for lost time and ended up arriving at Friar’s Bay at around 18:00. I shared the anchorage with only 2 other boats, one a catamaran called “Yahoo” that I’d always seen inside the lagoon and had assumed would never leave it. I put the boat to sleep and also re-mounted the dinghy outboard in preparation for tomorrow’s going ashore and combined shopping/clearing in.