Marigot and then off the main roads into the Loterie Farm. Our purpose for this visit was to experience the Extreme Fly Zone - a zip line course through the rain forest. They geared us up and drove us to the top of the course. We were wearing climbing harnesses with a rolling shackle that latched onto the cable and a glove on one hand to slow you down. You would latch yourself onto the cable, launch yourself forward and fold your legs up to your chest, leaning back to get as much speed and distance as you could while hurtling forward into space some 20 or 30 feet above the tops of the trees. In a few cases, you would land on the ground, but most of 
the time you would be landing on a small platform at the top of a tree. Then you would have to climb down a ladder to get to the next level. Sometimes there were sky bridges between one zip line and the next. The bridges were generally 2 cables with slats of wood across them and 2 cables above as handrails. But these cables were all loose for the entire distance of the bridge with no solid supports and so they swung like mad in all possible directions, your feet wobbling beneath you with every step like an insane suspended bridge crossing in an Indiana Jones movie. One was even better than this with just a single cable for your feet, 2 cables as hand rails and one above to clip onto. All of these bridges were a bit scary but manageable if there was only one person on it. But no one wanted to be left behind so as soon as the second and then third person followed out on the cable the whole thing would start vibrating about and the swing would increase exponentially in all directions making it quite an adventure indeed. As we neared the end of that particular bridge our guide called us to come back out to the middle to look out across the valley where there were monkeys in the trees eating mangoes. We worked our way back to him and saw the 
monkey sitting on top of the canopy calmly eating the green fruit. There were about 9 zips including several that seemed like a thousand feet long or more and about 5 bridges and as many ladders and trails. By the end we were barely clipping in to any of the safety rails between zips and the heights didn't phase us a bit. With your gloved hand you can slow yourself down and after the first fear at the beginning and slowing down on the first few zips we were no longer bothering with slowing down any more because you risk not making it across the longer zips and having to turn around and pull yourself to the next platform. It was a swelteringly hot day and on the walk down we saw an abundance of lizards in every shape, size and color. Some were half blue and half brown, others were iridescent gold. I happily chased them all down the path. After we returned the gear we stopped in at the Tree Lounge, an open air bar up high with trees all about, nice and airy and couches everywhere. I ordered a sheesha and enjoyed some mango tobacco through the water pipe. It was a lovely day away from the lagoon. On the way back we found the Irish clan hitchhiking in Marigot and gave them a lift back to Ric's. It was interesting to be driving around in a car instead of walking or on a boat. It had been a long time since I had driven a car, or even rode in one. It made for some good variety in our experience and we went home happy and satisfied with a day well spent.
On another day, Dan became obsessed with the idea of constructing a rig to raise the hammock on a halyard partway up the mast. He spent hours working on the engineering of this rigging using every spare line on the boat as well as parts of Simon's boat including the stay sail boom from Dahlonega. Ruth and I came home from the grocery store to see Dan suspended in the air in his crazy contraption. Dan is definitely a humorous person to be around. Besides these crazy ideas for inventions which he immediately wants to build, he will come up with what we fondly call Danisms - "he's speaking Dan again..." like the day he was daydreaming at the table when suddenly he piped up with "I think I could catch rainbows with a flying carpet..." Always good for a chuckle.Dan was needing a new phone and Sam contemplating a laptop since Dan's phone had gone swimming, been rescued, taken apart, rinsed in fresh water, dried, and came back to life, then fell in a glass of beer... and Sam's laptop had slowly but surely lost all function in it's keys, one letter at a time, then one day the touch pad stopped working and the cursor would only hover over the icon for Internet, so Dan opened about 40 windows in frustration until the lap top's head exploded and it spontaneously combusted. We borrowed the jeep mobile again and took a little day trip to Phillipsburg - the only actual "city" on the island. We found electronics way and wandered through all the shops browsing the latest technology. I had been thinking about replacing my laptop as well, but had a specific replacement in mind and most places in the Caribbean did not seem to carry it yet. My issue was the size and weight of my laptop. It weighed nearly 8 pounds and required that if I wanted to travel with it I inevitably ended up carrying 2 bags. Not a big deal at the moment while I was on a boat but much more of a big deal when I am in my more mobile state. Besides we often had to take laptops ashore for Internet from the boat and I never wanted to because of how heavy and bulky it was. The laptop I had been looking at was fairly new. It was an Asus EEEPC which ran on Linux, with about a 5 inch screen, that weighed about 1.5 pounds and had a 4 GB solid state hard drive so there were no spinning parts inside if it happened to be in a bag that got tossed or got blown by the wind off the cockpit table.... So I found one in the store and my day was made. I've always had trouble spending money in large increments. I seem to feel like I need to ask permission from other people to spend my own money. Even though I know that I have already made the decision to do it and am just looking for someone to affirm that I am doing the right thing. For the same as a low end laptop I got it as well as a 250 GB portable USB driven hard drive that was the size of my hand and weighs less than a pound and a portable USB plug in CD/DVD reader and writer. The laptop itself has a built in web cam, wireless antenna and camera card reader slot. Most of the time I would only need to carry around the actual laptop for email purposes which is barely bigger than the average paperback novel, and on the off chance that I want to do some actual work and need to bring the 2 accessory parts - the entire setup fits in a small canvas bag the size of the average woman's pocketbook. Smaller, even. The guy must not have had many sales because he started offering me all kinds of free stuff. Maybe he thought I was still hemming and hawing over the decision - though in my mind I knew I was going to buy it as soon as I saw it one the shelf, but as I said, I was asking all my friends for justification for the expenditure. So he said he would throw in a free mouse. "Can it be wireless?" I asked. "Sure," he said. I asked if he had a case for it. He said he would throw one in as well. Then as I was plugging in my new toy to check it out, he says, "Should I give you a headset as well?" "I like it when people give me things for free! That would be great!" I ended up with more than $75 worth of free stuff in the end. I walked out of the store feeling like it was Christmas. I try to be fairly frugal with my money because I want to make it last as long as possible. But when I make a purchase that allows me to be lighter, more free, more mobile, more of a nomad - the purchase always sits well with me and in the end, needs no justification because it is aiding me in the quest to be more like who I really am and still stay connected with the world around me. It was a good day.
At that point we were watching the weather and counting our days. May 1st is the traditional time when most people start leaving the Caribbean to either head north to New England, south to Venezuela or east to the Mediterranean in order to avoid hurricane season. Although Simon's boat was 100% more ready to go than before we started helping, it still wasn't quite ready, and we had appointments north waiting on us. After some heavy thinking on the matter we all decided that Zenaida was going to embark on her journey north solo and hopefully after another week or two Dahlonega would be ready to sail and follow us, meeting up in the Vineyard towards the end of May after our stop in the Chesapeake. Ruth and I spent 
several days coming up with a provisioning list and did several grocery runs filling the dinghy with cases of water, piles of fruits and vegetables, snacks and a giant wheel of Gouda cheese. We got 
the boat all stowed and then organized a big going away party. We had been there so long that we had made a huge circle of friends and there were more than 30 people at dinner with us that night. We had already taken the boat outside and anchored in Simpson Bay so that we could leave whenever we wanted unencumbered by the bridge schedule. In the morning we sailed over to Phillipsburg, a quick hour long sail, and pulled up to the fuel dock. We filled the fuel tanks and water tanks, and did a little more last minute grocery shopping. Just as we were 
pulling away from the dock, the throttle cable broke and so we had to anchor and do an emergency repair, pulling up all the floor 
boards and pulling the new cable through all the compartments. It was swelteringly hot and Dan & Ruth came back from a shopping mission which resulted in ice cream melting all down their arms and all over the dinghy. Finally we were on our way back to Simpson Bay where we reanchored and headed over to customs on the French side to clear out. Sam & I dropped off the dinghy in Marigot and started to walk towards the customs office. Marigot was like a ghost town. I kept thinking it was a Sunday, because France is always closed on Sundays. But it was Thursday. We wracked our brains trying to think what was happening that everything should be locked down tight. It was Thursday, May 1st: May Day or Labor Day 
in many countries other than America, and for sure a national holiday in France. There was no way for us to clear out. We were there for one more night. It was a bit demoralizing. We felt like St Martin really was a Bermuda triangle we couldn't escape from. To 
assuage our frustration the whole gang went out for Sushi. Dan & Amit, the 2 Israeli guys in the crowd, had never had any kind of food that comes out of a Japanese restaurant. I introduced them to Miso soup, Edamame, Unagi, California Rolls, and how to eat with chopsticks. I got to speak in Chinese to the waitress who was from 
China. We had a blast for our final night......again. In the morning we cleared out and collected Dominic, also known as Domi Lama, a Scotsman who was heading north with us as well, then said our final goodbyes and sailed away from Sint Maarten. Finally we had broken free from the whirlpool of debauchery. It seems like everyone in St Martin despises being stuck there in the lagoon and yet, everyone seems to get stuck there for endless amounts of time. Every day we would see people who were supposed to have left days ago. Still here? we would say. And they would just shake their head in disgust. It's like casinos in America where they make the entrances like a big funnel drawing everyone in and then everything spreads out inside like catacombs and you can never find your way out. We had broken free. We were outside the lagoon in beautiful blue water again. We were sailing to a new adventure. It had definitely been far too long.
As we were pulling out of St Martin, we saw a dejected looking volleyball floating by. I remembered the movie CAST AWAY and quickly found a boat hook and other rescue devices. I jumped into the towed dinghy and floated myself back until safety was in reach all the while calling out reassurances to Wilson that I was coming. I got him quickly aboard only to discover his features to be a bit washed out. We did a quick makeover and Wilson became the newest member of our crew. Our sail began then in earnest, spurred on by Wilson's close brush with death. Live while ye may for death is coming! Argh... ye maties!PS -For those of you following this story, take a second look at the previous Sint Maarten blog - 2 entries back - as I've added new photos since I first posted it.
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