St Maarten/St Martin 13 March 2016 Newsletter Other newsletters Contests | Restaurants | Bargains and Happenings ISLAND NEWS

Weather: Last Sunday was pretty good. We saw Saba and Statia in the morning and St Kitts was visible in the afternoon. On the right is a shot taken from the Horny Toad Guesthouse in Simpson Bay, looking toward Kim Sha beach where the Heineken Regatta would finish with its award ceremony and concert later that evening. Monday was not as spectacular and it rained through most of our dinner in Grand Case. Tuesday did have parts of Saba, Statia, and St Kitts visible, but just barely. Wednesday was a warm, mostly sunny day (as the below left photo taken from Antoine Restaurant shows), but marine haze obscured Saba. Thursday morning arrived with a hint of Saba on the horizon and a hint of rain during the day. The whitecaps on the lagoon suggested 15-20 mph winds. Friday (below center) arrived with Saba barely visible. It is in the photo. look carefully. The wind had dropped off a bit. There were still whitecaps on the lagoon, but not as many. There was a mid-afternoon deluge and two more during dinner. Saturday arrived with enough marine haze to block out Saba and it was cooler (76F). It was pretty ugly for Passaat's sunset cruise (below right). The pano below was taken earlier on Saturday when it was bright and sunny. Sunday has arrived with marine haze hiding most of Saba, a thunderstorm blocking out Statia, and much less wind.

The next ten days show four clear days, five partly cloudy days, and one day with the chance of rain reaching 50% on Monday but totaling a mere 0.07 inches over the ten days. The high temperatures will be will be 82 for eight days, rising to 83F. The overnight low will range from at 74F to 75F. That's less rain and more sun than the previous week with smaller temperature swings. Here's the detailed forecast from Weather Underground and here's one from the Weather Channel. Sunset tonight will be at 6:21 PM. That provides 12 hours of sunshine. We have two weeks to the vernal equinox (20 March), when everybody gets 12 hours of sunlight (actually a bit more because of the bending of light rays by the atmosphere.) The full moons for 2016 will be 23 Mar, 22 Apr, 21 May, 20 Jun, 19 Jul, 18 Aug, 16 Sep, 16 Oct, 14 Nov, and 13 Dec.

SXM-Beaches: According to the Daily Herald, on Wednesday the three holdout restaurateurs and Saint Martin Wake Up blockaded the RN7 in Orient Bay in two spots, one near the Cadisco Station and the other near French Quarter, effectively trapping anyone between those barriers on Orient Beach while preventing any other people onto Orient Beach. Basically they screwed all the tourists and all other business owners on Orient Beach. This was especially bad as the SXMusic festival was to have started on Wednesday at Palm Beach Restaurant. Some tourists were seen walking down RN7 with their luggage after having paid for the "privilege" of crossing over the barricades) It gets worse. On Thursday the gendarmes prevented a barricade from being placed in Agremont on the eastern edge of Marigot. Moreover when the tried to take down the barricades that were already in place they were pelted with stones and responded with tear gas. Here's a cheery thought: France and the French overseas territories are still in a high level security alert situation following the Paris terrorist attacks and therefore the Gendarmerie has unlimited powers to maintain law and order, supported by the State. On Saturday, Wendy K said "The Cupecoy beaches have been much the same since Monday: No sand at Shore Pointe beach; lots of wet sand at middle beach; dry sand and pretty calm water at baby beach; and virtually no sand, other than in the various coves at Ocean Club beach. But oh, these winds... Enough already!" In other news, Tropical Wave is still fighting to keep their operation going on Galion Beach. Pat has been collecting signatures at the restaurant and you can add yours on the internet. At this time there are over 563 signatures. Help save Galion Beach! Please sign this petition.

Beach Reading: The New Food Lover's Companion by Sharon Tyler Herbst and Ron Herbst ($10 Kindle or paperback) - I learn a lot writing these newsletters, and much of what I learn can be found in this book. The fifth edition of this widely praised and highly esteemed reference guide has been updated with new information to reflect the way we eat in today's world. The authors have taken into account our healthier lifestyles and more diverse palates to include over 500 new listings, including Korean, Persian, and South American additions; updated information for hundreds of existing entries; a blood alcohol concentration chart for men and women; an extensive breakdown of food labels and nutritional facts; and the Department of Agriculture recommendations for a 2,000 calorie per day food plan. Among the myriad foods and culinary subjects defined and explained are cooking tools and techniques, meat cuts, breads, pastas, and literally everything else related to good food and enjoyable dining. Handy appendices cover many topics including suggestions for substituting recipe ingredients, a microwave oven conversion chart, recommended safe cooking temperatures for meats and fish, and much more. The New Food Lover's Companion is a reference guide, not a cookbook, but it includes hundreds of cooking tips plus an extensive bibliography of recommended cookbooks. More than 7200 entries plus line art are included in this seminal work.

Our unit will not be available in early April when we leave as we have signed a lease with our previous med school tenant. He will be here through the end of the year. Next door, studio unit 254, will be available for a couple weeks in mid-April. Check out the website and send Jim an email if you are interested.

For another approach, consider Andrey Melnichenko's yacht A, the 400 foot, $300 million dollar submarine-like yacht on the right. If you find that too confining, step up to Roman Abramovich's Eclipse which is 533 foot long costing a mere $340 million, considerably cheaper per foot. The two Russian billionaires were anchored off the end of the runway. I took this shot from our Caribbean balcony.

With the Euro being so weak against the dollar it behooves those of us with dollars to check the exchange rate offered by restaurants again. For several years French side restaurants have been offering better than market exchange rates, especially for cash. If a French side restaurant offers a bad exchange rate, ask for your credit card to be charged in Euros. Assuming you followed my advice below and got a card that has no charge for foreign transactions you will get the wholesale rate on the exchange.

You should not be paying a currency transaction charge as there are many credit cards that don't have this onerous charge. My United Mileage Plus Explorer/Chase card no longer charges it and gets my first bag checked free for all United tickets purchased on the card.

We had a Capital One Signature Visa Venture card. It's true that frequent flier benefits could be used on any airline and there are no blackouts, but that is because you accumulate 1 cent worth of ticket for every dollar you spend on the card. Then you use that to buy a ticket. To buy our round trip from Albany to SXM costs about $700 meaning we would have to spend $70,000 in order to get the ticket. Frequently we can get flights on United for 37,500 frequent flyer miles, ie the frequent flyer miles on United are worth about 2 cents, about twice as much. In the Spring of 2014, Martha was offered a Capital One Quicksilver Visa Signature Card that gives us 1.5% cash back - no fooling around with miles. They do not charge an exchange fee on foreign transactions and they do provide rental car insurance. This has been our primary card as airline miles are not as valuable or as easy to use as they used to be. Consequently, we canceled the Capital One Venture card with a $30,000 credit limit. The newer Quicksilver card only had $18,000 limit. I asked if they could bump up the credit limit on the Quicksilver card. Seems logical, they were on the hook for $48,000 before I canceled, why not keep the total the same. They said it doesn't work that way. My reply was that when the Quicksilver card runs out of credit limit, I'll use my United card. Your loss.

We always notify our card companies of our travel. Chase and Quicksilver actually accept this info on-line, making it much easier than working through the hell of telephone answering systems.

There are discussions on Credit card Forum and Daily Markets that may help you decide what card is best for you. The first one has a review of the new Chase Sapphire Preferred Card. It gives you 2 points for travel related purchases and then allows you to take 20% off when purchasing your rewards through their Ultimate Rewards portal. It's tempting.