St Maarten/St Martin 24 January 2016 Newsletter Other newsletters Contests | Restaurants | Bargains and Happenings ISLAND NEWS

Weather: Last Sunday turned out to be a lovely day although it ended with a mess for the cruise ship and Saba (right). We just had a bit of a sprinkle that led to the rainbow below left. The rainbow is a bit off in that the pot of gold is in Stew Leonard's house at the top of the hill. Monday was just as nice, if anything, a bit too warm. Wednesday found the navy protecting us from a tiny sailboat with Saba in the background. The water spouts are an indication of the winds that have been roiling the island. The sunset pano produced a bit of a green flash on Thursday night. Not exactly weather, but for the next couple weeks five planets will be visible about 45 minutes before sunrise if you look south from the northeastern US. You'll need very good eyes on a very clear morning to see tiny Mercury. The next ten days show 6 clear days, 1 partly cloudy day, and 3 days with a chance of rain reaching 33% but totaling 0.05 inches. The high temperature will be 82 reaching 83F on two days. The overnight low will be 75F with two days dropping down to a bone-chilling 74F. That's another nice batch of weather heading in our direction, big thumbs up to the tourist bureau. Sorry for all of you on the east coast. Here's the detailed forecast from Weather Underground and here's one from the Weather Channel.

Sunset tonight will be at 6:02 PM. That provides 11 hours and 16 minutes of sunshine. That's six minutes more than last week. We are just over a month past the solstice, heading for 44 more minutes of sunshine in about 60 days on the vernal equinox (20 March). The full moons for 2016 will be 22 Feb, 23 Mar, 22 Apr, 21 May, 20 Jun, 19 Jul, 18 Aug, 16 Sep, 16 Oct, 14 Nov, and 13 Dec.

SXM-Beaches: Dare I say it? It appears that the sargassum weed is diminishing. It may just be the result of Hurricane Alex followed by the monster storm roaming over the east coast, but it's good news for now. Bay Rouge is named for the pinkish cast of its sand. It's a pretty beach with the Falaise des Ouiseaux (Bird Cliffs) to the west and David's Grotto on the east. The photo on the left from 2016 looks along the beach from the entrance over the two beach bars to the cliffs. There is about a mile of mostly sandy beach off to the west of the entrance. The other photo shows the rocks that start the formation that encloses the grotto. There are beach bars serving food and drink and beach chairs are available. The grotto has suffered in recent storms and is partially collapsed.

The Bird Cliffs below were featured in Speed 2. At one point the cruise ship was heading south into the cliffs on the north side of the island. The next scene had it heading north into GEBE's oil tanks in Cay Bay on the Dutch side. It ended south ,crashing into Marigot, running up onto a beach (?) at the Marigot Market. It crunched over the ground coming to rest at a newly built church clanging its bell. Martha said that we have enough sand at Sapphire to get into the water safely. I can hear the waves crashing and feel the breeze that suggests the water itself may not be too safe. Moreover, Wendy K said on Saturday: "The current seems to have changed, with waves now heading back towards Shore Pointe beach. Still, the water is very choppy with some large swells, but not as bad as the last few days. The most sand is still at baby and middle beaches." this morning she said "The sand has filled in the pool at Shore Pointe beach, and covers the cave end of the beach. Still dry sand for one row of chairs at baby beach."

Restless by William Boyd ($4 used, $13 paperback, $5 audio CD) The New Yorker says "Boyd's ninth novel, an absorbing historical thriller, is loosely based on the history of a covert branch of British intelligence created to coax America into the Second World War. The story unfolds on parallel tracks as Sally Gilmartin, born Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian emigrée recruited into the British Secret Service in 1939, reveals her clandestine past in an autobiography that she gives to her daughter, Ruth, a graduate student and single mother living a dull civilian life in Oxford in 1976. These installments give the narrative momentum (the accounts of Ruth's daily life drag, by contrast) as Eva describes the taciturn spy who recruited and trained her before becoming her lover; her secret propaganda work in New York; and the act of duplicity, almost deadly, that forced her to flee to England and live under an assumed identity. Ruth barely has time to process the shock of her mother's secret before she is swept into a dangerous game: finding her mother's betrayer before it's too late." Martha really liked this semi-historical novel.

	Sapphire Beach Club: On the right in the blue long-sleeve shirt is Jan Borsje, the new manager at Sapphire, serving drinks at the Manager's Monday night party. It's one hour of free drinks and tasty, free finger foods from Da Paolo. There is a loud band but they are up against the building, blasting their sound out to sea. I did listen to a sales pitch this week and learned that a year end week in the 2BR,2B villas will be worth $48,000 in April when they have finished remodeling, but as I am already an owner and the remodeling is not done, I can take 40% off, dropping the price to $19,000. They will be renting these weeks at $3500 and the maintenance is about $1000. The figures work out to a bit over 10% return on investment. I find the rental income reasonable ($1750 per week per couple). However, there was no deduction for the rental commission and no mention of maintenance fee increases and no mention of the lack of maintenance that brought Sapphire to its current condition.
The swimming pool works and Martha uses the gym daily. We did have a pretty good lunch at Da Paolo (see below) and the views from our unit are spectacular. Below is the view to the south east, essentially the area off Maho Beach. At the far right of the photo, peeking out from the haze, is St Kitts.

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. At present, there are several 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.

SXM-Hotels: We stopped in at the Horny Toad Guesthouse on Simpson Bay and found the gardens to be lovely because of all the rain in December. Betty has put solar panels on both buildings, cutting her electric bill in half. The beach looks fine, no sargassum here. Alcohol: Sylvain at Select Wine Cellar has been having a great time lately. We've been enjoying the low alcohol, slightly fizzy Gazela vinho verde from Portugal with a dash of his Supercassis from Vedrenne in Nuits-Saint-George. It goes welll with sunsets.

SXM-Activities: Random Wind remains one of the top rated activities on the island. Diane and Captain Trevor take you on a tour in a sail boat. As it is a round trip, at some point the wind will be favorable, the sail will be hoisted, and the serene sounds of the sea are all that you will hear (maybe a bit of Jummy Buffet). In addition to the tour of SXM's coastline, the journey goes to a few dive spots and has a wonderful lunch at one of them. It depends on the the wind and the waves. That's their swing on the left. On the right is a battery operated gondola. It's also quiet as it takes you on a lagoon tour. We caught up with the gondola and the gondolier at Skipjack's. He was coming to the dock looking for some customers. There is more info on their website.

Groceries: We went back to Carrefour to get fresh milk. There are few places on the French side that have fresh milk and we worry about the turnover as we are a long way from the dairy. The bottles used to say McArthur Farm was in Florida. Now they say they are part of Dean Foods in Texas. I hope they don't ship to Texas and then distribute to the Caribbean. Here's a shot of the entrance to Simply on the ocean side of the main road in Sandy Ground. They are on the Marigot side of the French Bridge. We usually get our more exotic cheeses and patés at Simply. The cheapest Cadisco Gas is on the lagoon side of the road, a bit closer to Marigot. Gas: The Dutch side lowered gasoline prices from 1.67 NAf to 1.6 NAf per liter this week. If you get an exchange rate of 1.75, always a big IF, that's $3.46 for a gallon, close to, but a little bit more than the Cadisco offering super at 0.91€ but taking dollars at 1 to 1, so no exchange rate shenanigans are possible. Now that there is no gas station at the Airport, this is the closest gas station for those of us in Cupecoy.

	Nature:The dove is back on the nest in the palm tree off our balcony. She hatched out some chicks on Tuesday. Our office is well over 100% solar-powered. In fact, in six years of operation our solar panels have produced over half the electrical needs for the house, my work shop, and a large animal barn. Our hosting company servers are about 130% wind-powered.
Small Island story: You knew the construction at Orient would be here someday. It was quite costly despite saving money by ignoring various parts of the building code: no vents for stoves, no floor drain in the kitchen, no shutoff for the electric, etc. The last is not much of a problem as there is no electricity yet. They told Orange Fever they would be able to choose the color of their new building and then painted it green. I'll be mining this fiasco for years.

Current Contest: now until 31 January
Lagoon Pub Crawl - two for one ticket
Skipjack's - $50 off a dinner for two
Marci's Mega Gym - Two for One week with a shake
Random Wind - $40 gift certificate
Select Wine Cellar - Wine tasting and a bottle of wine
Piazza Pascal - $50 off dinner for two
Pizza Galley - $25 off on a dinner for two -
Ti Coin Créole - $30 off on a 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 dinners and activities. I really check and a while ago Sulay entered 33 times for one contest, instead of increasing her chance of winning, she decreased it to zero as I deleted all of them. She did account for about a third of the entries for that contest.

Here's some comments from a past winner:

Future Contests:
31 Jan to 27 Mar | 27 Mar to 22 May
22 May to 21 August | 21 August to 20 November

same cast of characters as current contest