We tackled some climbing here in St. Martin. For weeks now, we've been anchored in front of Mount Fortune, so we decided to try climbing it. Mountain goats scamper up and down the face of this rock every afternoon. We put on our hiking boots and jeans and made it to the top, for spectacular views of the Simpson Bay Lagoon, Marigot on the French side of St. Martin, and Simpson Bay on the Dutch side. At the top the wind really blows like a banshee.
We've been waiting out strong trade winds and high seas (25 + knots, with squalls coming through regularly, and 10 to 12 foot seas). We went into the boatyard to chat with our friend Lindsey and others.
Our instruments are now in and working (at least the depth; we'll have to wait until we're underway to test the speed and distance). We chose Navman instruments to replace our original Datamarine setup, which lasted over 20 years of good service. Of course we had to do some carpentry to make the display fit, and the wire stringing around the boat took days to finish, mostly grunt work of taking everything out of all of our lockers to access the hidden panels and painstakingly shove wire through small holes. But we are delighted to have a working depth sounder and a crisp display with large, easy to read numbers.