St Maarten/St Martin 21 March 2010 Newsletter Other newsletters Contests | Restaurants | Bargains and Happenings ISLAND NEWS

Weather: Sunday afternoon was fabulous, warm, fairly humid, but with a bit of a breeze. On the left is Sunday's sun setting behind Porto Cupecoy. Monday was warmer and more humid. By Tuesday, the temperatures were in the mid 80s, the breeze amounted to nothing as the wind was shifting from SW to NE, and the humidity was about 80% - a good day to be at the beach or in the A/C. It was extremely hazy, I suspect Saharan dust with a lot of water vapor. There is not even a hint of Saba visible. Wednesday was more of the same and Thursday was the worst hitting 86F with little breeze and high humidity driving the comfort index into the mid 90s. On Friday the wind clocked around to the south and picked up so that even though it was 83F at lunchtime, it felt a bit better. Saturday was a bit better, a little lower temperature, a little lower humidity, still not much of a breeze, lots of haze, and a heat index of 91. Sunday morning is already 83 at 8AM with very little breeze. It looks like more of the same: hot, hazy, and humid with not even a hint of Saba.

The box shows the current local conditions and here's the detailed forecast from Weather Underground and here's one from the Weather Channel. This extremely hot weather may actually be a precursor to a worse than normal hurricane seson. However, this one week does barely makes up for the week I spent in long sleeves before that. A few more weeks of this and I might buy into the current hurricane predictions. Sunset today is at 6:18 and the moon is new. The full moons in 2010 will be 29 Mar, 28 Apr, 27 May, 26 Jun, 25 Jul, 24 Aug, 23 Sep, 22 Oct, 21 Nov, and 21 Dec.

SXM-Beaches: There is quite a bit of sand at the little cove at Cupecoy. That's first beach as you drive down the track after entering at Ocean Club. The stairs washed out a while ago, but Dany and the boys put in some ropes and handrails. One of the caves collapsed recently. I never thought you should spend much time in them. I've also heard that sand is returning to the big beach at the far northwest, in front of Shore Pointe. This photo is from a happier time. The location is about 50 yards south and several years before Shore Pointe. It's also from rather late in the season when we used to have large sections of the beach to ourselves.

Beach reading: The Mission Song by John Le Carré is his 20th novel, an engrossing tale of an idealistic and naïve British interpreter, Bruno "Salvo" Salvador. The 29-year-old Congo native's mixed parentage puts him in a tentative position in society, despite his being married to an attractive upper-class white Englishwoman, who's a celebrity journalist. Salvo's genius with languages has led to steady work from a variety of employers, including covert assignments from shadowy government entities. One such job enmeshes the interpreter in an ambitious scheme to finally bring stability to the much victimized Congo, and Salvo's personal stake in the outcome tests his professionalism and ethics. Amid the bursts of humor, Le Carré convincingly conveys his empathy for the African nation and his cynicism at its would-be saviors, both home-grown patriots and global powers seeking to impose democracy on a failed state. Especially impressive is the character of Salvo, who's a far cry from the author's typical protagonist but is just as plausible.

Construction: They have started seriously building the airport runway extension. I say seriously, because they have been dumping sand into the lagoon at the eastern end of the runway for a year or so. They finally have enough and are starting to reshape and grade it so that the road from the terminal can jog north a bit and go out into what was the lagoon before returning to reconnect to the main road closer to the Gourmet Marché. That little maneuver will allow them to extend the runway and put a larger turnaround at the end, in addition to giving them more room between the "security" fence and the runway.

Sapphire Beach Club: We are in our condo until mid-April but it is available after that for $900 to $1000 per week until 15 Dec, when high season kicks in. You'll get a 10% discount from Unity Car Rental, one of the longest running and most trusted on the island, and many more coupons as well. Check the calendar on our website for available dates. For those of you who wish to sell or rent their week or unit, we have opened up the Sapphire Beach Club website for that purpose. We charge $25 per year. If you wish to rent or sell your unit, send us some text (and $25 to esk@sxm-info.com via Paypal). If you wish to rent or buy a unit without high middleman fees, check out the website. Given the large assessment that Sapphire just levied, there may be a lot of sales. At present, there are 20 sales and/or rentals available directly from owners. Given a 25 to 35% standard rental commission, there should be some bargains in eliminating the middleman and dealing direct.

Activities: Here's a final Heineken Regatta photo from Richard E. Santaga. He says this was an Italian boat flying its spinnaker. I didn't know the Italians were such great fans of Casper the flying ghost. Diane on Random Wind says, "We anchored twice in Nettle Bay recently where we saw spotted eagle rays and good sized tunas jumping out of the water. We gave a trapeze show to lots of spectators at Mullet today. Trevor and I are working on our together back flip. Everyone loves the Tarzan swing!"

On Friday night after dinner we made it to Pineapple Pete to catch a few songs of Ronny Santana's final set. His last two songs were covers of Dire Straits' Sultans of Swing (with Mark Knopfler on lead guitar) and Chris Rea's Road to Hell (also with Knopfler on lead guitar). Knopfler is left-handed, but plays as if he were right-handed. Moreover, he does not use a pick. He is a finger-picker employing a modified claw hammer style, plucking down with the thumb and up with the fingers. If you watch the Sultans video closely, you'll see that the bass and rhythm guitar players are also not using picks. Watch Knopler and you'll see that he rarely uses his pinkie on his fretting (right) hand, like most rock guitarists. Come down and watch Ronny and you'll see he does, like most classical guitarists, which is where he started. After his set, Ronny came over for a drink and we caught up with what has been happening as we stayed away from the Regatta crowds two weeks ago and stayed inside in the A/C over this last miserable week. The Voices of Classic Rock (Loverboy’s Mike Reno, Toto’s Bobby Kimball, and John Cafferty) played at Port de Plaisance on the Thursday for regatta registration and Ronny helped out with equipment and sound for several of their gigs. That led to a discussion of old guitars. Turns out Ronny has a 62 Fender back in Holland. That's back before Leo Fender sold the company to CBS. You can bet quality did not improve when the bean-counters arrived.

This is not a very strenuous activity, but we did end up at Skipjack's on Saturday night to watch the NCAA tournament on their big screen TV. Obvious other choices would be Pineapple Pete's ESPN bar and Bonita's Cantina. Bonita's outfitted the front room with a new bar and two big screen TVs, just in time for the Superbowl. The back dining room also got some new and better TVs as soon as Bonny and Bryan took over.

Groceries: We went over to Wendy K's for a wine and cheese tasting on Sunday evening. We brought over some Petit Billy (a fabulous goat cheese from the town of Billy) and continuing clockwise from that at the bottom right, she had some Brillat Savarin, St Nectaire & Comté, and Papillon Roquefort. We started with the 2005 Pommard from Michel Picard that we got at Netco and she had a 2005 and 2006 Savigny Les Beaune from Bouchard. The Pommard was wonderful and the two Savignys showed that the 2005 was better. Nonetheless, the 2006 was perfectly good. All the cheese and the Bouchard wines came from US Market in Marigot at the French Bridge. We bought another Guadeloupe melon and more Guadeloupe tomatoes at Grand Marché. The melons have been very good this year. Just leave them out on the counter for two to four days and add some proscuitto and a chilled rosé. There are plenty to chose from down here, but we like the finesse of Select Wine Cellar's Sainte Croix. Use the coupon on the website to get 10% off.

Crime: The courts seem to be handing down tougher sentences lately. On Thursday the Daily Herald reported that Devon R. Frank, the killer of Jacques Busquet, got 15 years for aggravated manslaughter. Mr Busquet was a French businessman who owned Kangaroo Court and the short-lived Bumper Car emporium next to the short-lived Tijuana Yacht Club. He was stabbed to death for refusing to turn over the day's receipts ($700) on 12 Dec 2009. That's a pretty quick trial and conviction. The same day, the prosecutor asked for 20 years for a 21 year old who committed seven violent crimes between November 2008 and August 2009. The French side is setting things back a bit by sentencing a vigilante (Pascal Morelle) to six months for violent sequestration of minors. He had rounded up several teenagers who burgled his house and he even managed to recover some of his belongings, but he did it in a rather rough manner, using duct tape. The Herald was so upset they ran this editorial.

GEBE: I seriously jinxed GEBE by saying good things about them last Sunday. At the wine and cheese tasting mentioned above, the power failed shortly after sunset and did not return until about 10PM. The next day (Monday) the Herald reported that it was a total Dutch-side power failure caused by a short in a major line near Pburg. Tuesday's paper reported that some people in Belvedere were without power for six more hours on Monday. The rest of the week hasn't been much better according to various sources, although we hve not experienced outages here at Sapphire.

Nature: Here's a couple burros in a field along the road leading to Boo Boo Jam and Palm Beach Restaurant. Our office is well over 100% solar-powered and our servers are about 130% wind-powered. Small Island story: Being from NY, we are accustomed to dysfunctional government. Our squeaky clean former AG became a governor who got caught by the feds looking into money laundering and found him withdrawing large sums of cash to pay for his favorite hooker. The current genius seems to feel that his position gives him the right to further bully abused women into not prosecuting their abusers. And of course, our esteemed legislators haven't passed a budget on time in recent memory. Which brings me to our small island story. The budget here is of some importance as they want to get country status in October. The Dutch didn't think much of the first budget and sent it back. The current ruling alliance has been boycotting meetings of the executive council to avoid answering questions on the budget. This has not furthered the budget process noticeably.

I have had several entries from people who did not follow the rules for the Regatta Contest. They say: "First, all entries for these contests will be emails that have a subject that contains only the words "Regatta contest". The first line of the body of your email should have your bid in US$ for the fine vessel offered in the photo on the entry page. The second line of the body of the email should have the location of the fine vessel. The third line should have name of the contest sponsor. The fourth line of the body of the email should have the answer to the question posed in the contest."

I am astounded that only three entries know where that fine vessel is "berthed". They were the two winners and a third entry that actually had the name of the Bay spelled wrong and had an incorrect answer anyway. That boat has been at its current location for about a decade. I drive by it at least twice per week. Then again, I drive from my home in Cupecoy to dinners or lunches on the far French side at least twice per week. That should at least suggest that it is not on the Dutch side. (That's a hint.) There are still almost $400 worth of prizes left to be won.

Current Contest:

28 February to 25 April 2010
Caribbean View Condo - half price summer rental (May-October)
Lagoon Pub Crawl - two for one ticket
Skipjack's - $50 off a dinner for two
Select Wine Cellar - Wine tasting and a bottle of wine
Random Wind - $40 gift certificate
MMG 2000 - Two for One week at the gym with a shake
Tijon Perfume - One free bottle
Peg Leg Pub - $50 off a dinner for two
PassportMD - Six months free service
Radiant Gems - $50 off a purchase of $200 or more
Lighthouse at Oyster Bay - $1000 off a summer week (June-October)
Piazza Pascal - $50 off dinner for two

Read our rules, visit the websites of these sponsors, find their contest codes, and enter them on our entry form.

One of the rules is that you should enter each contest only once. You can enter five of the drawings on one entry. Thus, you could win a rather nice vacation at a considerable savings by combining accommodations with dinners and activities.

Future Contests:
25 April to 25 July | 25 July to 31 October | 31 October to 26 December
same cast of characters as current contest

Bamboo Bernies On Monday night we went to Bamboo Bernies for some shrimp tempura, gyoza, and sushi. They were voted the best sushi on the island by the readers of the Daily Herald. It still is one of the smartest places on the island: low lighting with bold colors, interesting Asian touches, and widely spaced tables. We choose some sparkling water and a bottle of Simi's 2008 Sauvignon Blanc ($30), a very nice wine with fish, sushi in particular. Like last year, we had the tempura shrimp (below left, $14). Five large shrimp arrived with topped by a bit of shredded veg with three dipping sauces and a very good soy sauce already on the table.       We also had very crispy, pan-fried, pork dumplings (below center, $8) with another dipping sauce. Our main courses were the sushi dinner (which included miso soup for $28) and a small sashimi plate ($24) - all quite good. The photo is the chef displaying another creation. The cost for the entire dinner was about $130 including 3% tax and a 15% tip.

Kakao Beach Bar         On Tuesday we headed out to Orient Beach for a another long lunch at Kakao Beach Bar. Martha had the Créole platter (above left, 18€) and I had the pizza suprême with mushrooms and ham (above right, 12€). We had the 2006 Guigal Côtes du Rhône (below left, 26€). With a bottle of water, our total bill was $84, using a favorable 1.33 exchange rate. Service, as always, was great. These lower photos give you an idea as to why we like this place so much. All the photos were taken while seated at the table. Look past our wine glass and water bottle and you'll get an idea how far it is to the nearest table and the amount of greenery between tables. The center photo was a very colorful catamaran passing by on Orient Bay, but again, I had to take the shot when it appeared through an opening in the palms that are scattered through the dining area. That's Green Cay in the background. The last photo is a packet of sugarbirds at their feeder next to this table. No, you probably won't find that term of venery in any list, as I just made it up. BTW, the correct term for bankers is wunch.

Rancho Del Sol     After lunch we stopped at Rancho Del Sol to show Johan the article we published that contains his recipe for coconut flan. As we had brought the computer, we picked up our email using their free WiFi while we enjoyed drinks on the patio. It's a great office! They are located high on a hill overlooking Tintamarre, Green Cay (in the background, behind the aloe vera flowers), all of Orient Bay, and even St Barts.