Hard Livin'

So we’ve decided to keep Lark in the Geminga Boat Yard in Sandy Ground just west of Marigot through the end of storm season. There are no hurricane haul out plans in Saint Martin like there are in Florida, so if you don’t want to spend the season in the water, you have to spend it on the hard. This really threw us for a loop, but we’re surviving it so far.

Where we are positioned in the yard we actually have a beautiful sweeping view of Simpson Bay Lagoon and the nightly light show on Fort Louis up on the hill. We’re about a mile walk to SuperU, our favorite French grocery, and right next door to Island Water World which is handy for all kinds of boat projects. And of course, being directly on the Lagoon we can dinghy to Shrimpy’s for laundry, Lagoonies for happy hour, and any other cruiser’s boat we want to visit. It’s really not bad at all. The biggest challenge has been related to the bathroom facilities. We ended up getting a port-a-potti, which it is my job to empty daily in the shore-side head.

We do have plenty of boat jobs to keep us busy in the meantime. Before launching in November, we need to finish reinstalling all the running gear; check and possibly replace several through-hulls; do a bottom job; replace the forestay and a mizzen shroud; inspect all the standing rigging and see if anything else shows up; re-bond a couple through-hulls; fix the bilge pump float; and probably most fun of all: replace a broken copper strap running down into the deep bilge to bond the cast-iron ballast to the electrical system of the rest of the boat.