After a change of planes in Phili, and another in San Juan we arrived in St. Maarten . We nervously approached one of the women at the immigration counter. Just as the U.S. Air attendant had anticipated, we were not about to pass through unquestioned. She passively, but severely inquired about our boat, and asked if we had \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the letter\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to prove that we really had a boat, that we were the owners, that it was in St. Maarten, and that we were really going to sail out of there . Just what kind of letter this could be was beyond us. We showed her the letter we had used at the Providence airport, and Mark pointed out how official it was, including our boat name, our names, and the Marina \u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name and address. Luckily she was not in the mood to inquire further and we passed through immigration without further ado.<\/div>\n
Our bags were there, a dozen taxis were parked outside, and soon we were on our way to the marina \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a mere two miles away. When the taxi came to an abrupt halt just \u00bd mile down the road from the airport, we thought there must have been an accident on the road. When the time stretched from a few minutes to several minutes we inquired about what was happening. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, the taxi driver said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the bridge is up\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. The bridge is opened six times a day to let boats into and out of the large harbor that our boat is in. What we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t realize was that when the bridge is up \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which can be anywhere from \u00bd hour to a couple of hours, depending on how many boats are moving in and out \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the main road into and out of the airport comes to a complete stop. What was so bewildering to us was that the taxi driver knew in advance that the bridge was up and would be up for a while \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and yet we sat there in line with what grew to be several hundred cars \u00e2\u20ac\u201c all with their motors idling. No one thought to say , \u00e2\u20ac\u0153 Hey, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just wait at the airport until the bridge opens.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d So much for environmental awareness.<\/div>\n
After 40 minutes we were on our way again, and safely made it to the marina.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The boat looks great- clean and all polished up \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and we are exhausted.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Welcome to Paradise .<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Thursday, December 14, 2006<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Just one thing to report from this first very laid back day. There are some unbelievable yachts here \u00e2\u20ac\u201c our boat looks like a dinghy compared to some of our neighbors. The 150 foot, 3 story high mega-yacht that is just across the dock from us had their lights on in their dining area last night, so we could spy in. There was an unusually pretty painting mounted on the wall facing us. Taking out our binoculars, we casually glanced inside to see what was clearly an original Chagall oil painting. Wow!<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Your Documents, Please\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.. We made it to T.F. Green airport with plenty of time to spare on Wednesday morning. Our flight was scheduled for 7:15 a.m. and having been picked up by the Comfort Inn Shuttle at 5:15 we were at the airport just minutes later. (By the way, for those of you who love … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Your Documents, Please…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21,1],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-caribbean","category-other","tag-caribbean"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}