Turtles at at the beach Bar. Will they hatch and survive?

Let's hope these turtle eggs hatch OK. The nest appeared outside one of St. Maarten's most popular beach bars. Lot's of noise, people and music. The St. Maarten Nature Foundation threw the cordon around it, and we'll keep you updated here.

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It’s red, it’s plump, it’s a rusty sailing lump

Shame on me! Our boat, once our pride and joy, is now a flagship for the adage ships and men rot in port. Okay, my wife says I haven’t rotted that much, God love her, but she does agree that the boat is a mess. Now, thanks to a friend with a space in his construction yard, things are about to change. You could be forgiven for thinking that living in what is dubbed The Yachting Capital of the Caribbean; it would be easy to keep a boat maintained. But times and boats have changed. Fiberglass, money, and, yes, respectability is the name of the game. The days when a St. Maarten boat yard (note: I say St. Maarten and not St. Martin) would haul your steel boat and let you cut, weld and grind, are almost gone. You can’t blame them, who wants rust marks all over the topsides of their recently sprayed boat? Still, it doesn’t change the fact that cruising, as we once knew it, has changed. Banging on the boat with a chipping hammer brought back memories of clouting my wooden boat with a mallet. Bang … whoa, what’s that? Thunk … shit, that sounds expensive. Not surprising, then, that owners of older fiberglass boats spend so much time poncing about sailing, while us diehards are character building 

A time to sail, a time to broadcast

Blame it on the Heineken Regatta! The problem with a radio station that not only has a great maritime show but a team of presenters who actually sail, is that for one week in March no one wants to be in the Island 92 studio. Usually you can’t tear a presenter away from the microphone but the Green Machine changes all that.
Before sitting down to write this I visited the yacht club to attend a press conference, and within ten minutes spoke to four of the world’s top sailors. Talk about putting St. Maarten on the map!
Talking about maps, the YachtBlast podcast goes from strength to strength and is now downloaded more than 2000 times a week worldwide. We’re lucky in St. Maarten, through the yacht club we can sail whenever we want. Technology is grand but it’s no substitute for a fair wind and a cold beer.

Hit and Run on Proselyte Reef

On Monday, I had a very angry call from the Ocean Explorers Dive Center and dive master Lucian de Lima, who told me that that over the weekend a ship had run into Proselyte reef off Philipsburg, and done a huge amount of damage to the coral. As it turns out, it wasn’t a ship but a tug probably towing a barge. Divers think the tug slowed down as it approached Great Bay, which caused the steel towing cable to sink to the bottom over the reef. When the tug accelerated, the towing cable scythed across the reef destroying three swathes of coral some thirty feet wide. No vessel should be in the vicinity of Proselyte Reef as it’s within the marine park. There is a light on the reef, it is visible in daylight, and it is marked on the chart, so you don’t even need GPS to find it. As usual, the ship failed to report the incident and legged it. It happens a lot in St. Maarten. Human nature, I guess, vessels spill oil and diesel and don’t own up. Legislation is in place to issue fines but when money is tight, there is no one to enforce it. According to the divers, the reef could be repaired, but again it takes time and money. Both are in short supply. One month from now and the coral is beyond repair and nature will have to take its course. To hear more about the damage to Proselyte Reef download the February 7th YachtBlast podcast from iTunes.