Sunday, May 27th Bobby's Marina, St Martin

The trip was long but okay. At Antigua they surprised me by having my luggage labeled through. to St Martin. I was told to pick it up there and have it checked in again since the last part was with a different airline. When the luggage belt stopped and my bags weren't there I immediately went over to the desk because the plane was going through to Tobago, with my bags still on board ??

The lady looked at my baggage tags and told me I should pick it up at St. Martin. I didn't really believe her but there was nothing else I could do … But it all went well and I could see them unload my bags when we got to St. Martin. Eline was already there, she hes landed 10 minutes earlier, arriving from Curacao, right on schedule. She was a bit emotional... coming back after so many years :-)

Together we got a taxi and went over to Bobby's Marina. Getting on board was quite a surprise!!

When I went down I stepped in the water... salt water. That was not the idea, not at all !!!

I took off my shoes and went looking for the leak which obviously was there. It didn't take long to find it. The sea cock that I had fixed in Brighton hadn't held after all Water was coming quite fast.

When I wiggled the sea cock, it snapped completely and now water was really coming in …

Luckily the plug I have hanging at every sea cock did fit and I was able to stop the leak.

Hmm, when we had a closer look there was around 2 inches of water above the floor boards. That's a lot!! We started pumping, by hand since the bilge pump was completely under water, but it went better using buckets. When we got enough water out, the pump did the rest.

In the mean time I had called Mick, the supervisor of the marina, to ask him if he could lift me out. Since he had no one around to help him, he told me he would help us first thing tomorrow morning.

That was okay, the plug held fine so we weren't sinking any longer.

By that time Frits had called my, Arie and he had missed their connection in Miami. Customs and immigration had taken too long …. and they had missed there flight by 10 minutes. Oh well, I guess that wasn't too bad after all. The four of us might have been too many and we would have gotten in each others way.

Around 21:00 Eline and I had had enough and went out for dinner. The first place we could get to was ' Curry in a Hurry' what turned out to be a very nice local restaurant and the food was good too :-)

Next morning I went over to Mick and an hour later we were on the hard. Andy one of the engineers that was around on a Saturday, looked at it and told me he would be able to help me and replace the hull though fitting. It looked like a classic example of electrolysis that had completely eaten the fitting. Andy also checked all the other fittings and they were all fine. Since we were on the hard, we cleaned the hull. Enough came off to give us a knot or so more in speed :-)

Anyway, I guess we were very lucky after all. If we would have come a day later, the boat might have been completely sunk. Also this is not something you want to have happen mid Atlantic!!

Eline and I spend the day organizing the boat and fix the instruments I had taken home to repair. Nothing seemed to have been damaged by the water. Around 6 pm we went over to have diner and there I got a call from Frits that they had landed. It took them about an hour to get to the marina which is really a 4 minute drive,qa but anyway :-)

Well this was some arrival … and so much for the plan :-) Today we'll go and do some chopping while Andy will fix the fitting. Monday morning we'll be in the water again and off to Antigua.