Shopping in St Martin/Sint Maarten

Part French and part Dutch, St Martin/Sint Maarten is small island of only about 12 miles long. It is a very popular tourist destination, especially for boaters.  It is also duty free, so great for shopping too.

We had specifically come here to buy boat bits as we knew, once we left St Lucia for our journey into the Pacific, parts would be hard to find and very expensive.

As well as shopping for parts/spares, Sint Maarten is a great place for getting work done. We visited FKG Marine Rigging and Fabrication and St Maarten Sails and Canvas as we had a sail we wanted adapting and some stainless fabrication done.

We spent most of our three weeks here, shopping and working, but on the last couple of days we were joined by Stefan and Barbara on Nova and we all played tourist.

A short walk up the headland from Marigot took us to Fort Louis. The fort was built in 1789 to defend Marigot from British and Dutch pirates. This was especially important as Marigot housed the warehouses full of sugarcane, coffee, salt and rum. There is little remaining of the abandoned fort, however, our walk was rewarded with impressive views across Marigot Bay, the lagoon and, in the distance, Sint Maarten.

The next day, we headed to Topper’s Rhum Distillery in Sint Maarten, advertised as the home of the ‘World’s Best Tasting Rhum’. The write up also said ‘enjoy unlimited tastings of our six signature rums, our famous rum cake and even try some of our 100+ flavours that are in development.’ Our kind of tour!! The building was surprisingly small, but the tour crammed in a lot of information about the history of rum and Topper’s distillery and, of course, lots of tasting.

No catch up with fellow cruisers would be complete without a good meal out and, of course, a couple of local cocktails. This was a great evening, but also tinged with sadness as it was our farewell to Stefan and Barbara – our future plans are in different directions. We said Auf Wiedersehen, knowing that our paths will definitely cross again in the future – another time and another place, but we will meet again.