New Year, New Island

Thanks Evelyn for the jazzy post title! Here we are at the beginning of 2026 – crazy! And to top it off, we made our 93nm trip in about 17 hours and we’re now anchored in lovely St. Martin. If you’d asked me a few years ago if I would be in St. Martin for the start of a new year, I probably would have said “Where?” and then laughed at the thought of sailing that far. Well we made it and I’m super happy and proud of us. St. Martin is known for many things but to cruisers (well us 😁), it’s known as the corner! It’s all east sailing (well mostly motoring) to get to this point in the Leeward Islands. From here we should be able to sail easily down the chain of islands that end at our summer storage destination, Trinidad.

We ended up leaving Lameshur Bay, St. John (USVI) early on January 1st – anchor up just after 11 am. We were ready and the anchorage was so rolly that we figured we might as well be making some distance. It was a beautiful day on the water. The low wind and waves predictions held true and we were motoring along in the mid 5 knots (which is normal for our boat). Our plotter ETA when we started out was 3:15am – yikes!!! It’s not ideal to come into an unknown anchorage in the dark but we figured that time would certainly change as we made our way across the 93 nm passage.

It seemed to take a long time to get out of the shelter of the USVIs and the BVIs. Lots of boats were on the move but very few were heading on our course. After several hours of motoring in very calm water (for the ocean), we were finally away from all the islands and getting the full impact of the Atlantic Ocean. Thankfully it made no difference!!! Our course was very easy – a couple of turns getting away from the BVIs and then straight across to St. Martin. We saw some boat traffic – other pleasure craft heading our way, mega yachts heading to the BVIs and a few cruise ships going here, there and everywhere.

Fairly quickly (or at least it felt that way) we transitioned into an overnight passage. The sun set around 6 pm but we were super fortunate to have an almost full moon that was visible for the entire night!! The moon was so bright that we could see clearly. It was very comforting to have the moon by our side and it made the night passage much smoother. Mark had a 2 hour (ish) sleep around 11 pm (and I listened to music and danced to keep awake 😁). I have a hard time sleeping during a night passage so it was easier for me to stay at the helm while Mark got some rest! By 1am we were both in the cockpit and eager to reach our destination.

One of the most amazing things as we crossed (not just the awesome moonlight) was that we started seeing the lights of St. Martin about 23 nm out (that’s about 4 hours away). Mark noticed this red light that kept bouncing up on the horizon that we thought must be a ship. No it was St. Martin. It was super nice seeing those lights as we made our way east to our anchorage – Marigot Bay (French side).

I can’t tell you how many times we’ve come into a new harbour in the dark and said “we’ll never do that again”. Well we did it again!! We motored into Marigot Bay around 3:30 am. We were super lucky to have the moon still shining brightly behind us. The well lit bay on the other hand, made it very difficult to tell what was lights on shore and what was boats anchored. As we got closer, it was very easy to see boats anchored and we found a decent spot to drop our anchor. It was 4:05 am when we were secured in the bay!! Time to sleep!!!

We had a short 3 hours sleep and were up again around 8 am (Jan. 2). It’s always fun to take a look around at a place you arrived to in the dark – can be surprising!! The bay is very large and full of boats – mega yachts, mega sailing yachts (over 150 ft) and many smaller pleasure crafts like us! Our first anchoring spot was not great (what can you expect at 4 am in the dark 😁), so we moved deeper into the bay (closer to shore). Our friends John (who stayed on our boat in Fajardo) and Sharron have been here since mid December so we touched base with them and made a lunch date.

So here we are!! We have almost a month to explore this island and the area (Anguilla is only 10 nm to the north and St. Barth’s is only 15 nm to the south) before Mark’s brother John, his wife Sadhana and their 2 kids arrive in St. Martin on Jan. 27th.