trying to reason with hurricane season

Storm clouds over St. Martin, remnants from one of the first tropical waves of the season.

Well, the wind is blowin' harder now
Fifty knots or thereabouts
There's white caps on the ocean
 And I'm watchin' for waterspouts

It's time to close the shutters
 It's time to go inside
 In a week I'll be in gay Paris
 That's a mighty long airplane ride

Excerpt from Jimmy Buffet’s song “Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season"

This image was taken from an advertisement promoting Trinidad as a good place to weather hurricane season. You can see their point... St. Martin on the other hand is obscured by historical tracks--yikes!

I am writing this from New York City where we have stopped to visit friends and family on our way home to Paris.  Taka Trois is back in St. Martin all trussed up, battened down, stripped of sails and squeeky clean from bow to stern where she will remain until our official return next December.  Our plan is to live in France from June through December and on the boat from December to June.  Patrice will travel back and forth as work demands, so he will be able to check up on her every six weeks or so when he comes back to the island for consulting work.  

In our absence she will be well looked after by the harbor officials and a local named ‘Sun’ who we have hired to do some weekly maintenance.  He  will also do what is necessary in case, God forbid, the unthinkable happens during this hurricane season. And no, Mr. Buffet, there is no 'trying to reason with a hurricane season,' there's just prayer.

Patrice and our buddy Sun just before we flew out

Our last few weeks onboard were largely taken up with cleaning, packing, sorting and making arrangements for Taka Trois' care.  During this time Patrice also began his work Taka Technologies, our consulting company, in earnest following up on more leads and giving a good chunk of his time to Seven Seas Water, a desalination company out of Tampa Florida who has given him his first contract with a monthly retainer.  Hallelujah!

All work and no play is never a good thing for the crew of Taka Trois, especially during the stinky hot, humid, mosquito infested rainy season in the islands.  So we were very pleased to take some time off to do some sailing despite the weather and have some fun showing off our 'playground' (see previous post) to some close friends who came to stay with us for awhile.  Of note was our first trip to Île Tintamarre, a small island which is now a nature reserve just a few short miles from Anse Marcel.  

Île Tintamarre is a small island with an area of approximately 0.8 square kilometres (0.3 sq mi).  It is about 3 kilometres (2 mi) from Saint Martin, and is administered as part of the French overseas collectivity of Saint Martin.  The island has no human occupants, but has been inhabited in the past and once had it's own king, navy, and airline, but you'll have to wait until we come back next year to get the full story.

Most things, both good and bad do eventually come to an end and our time onboard Taka Trois ended mid-June, when we left the boat to fly up here.  I'll be honest, leaving Taka Trois was easy.  After living aboard for 13 months and 5 days, admittedly with a few breaks, we are both more than ready to become landlubbers again.  Please don't misunderstand me, we still love sailing and we love living aboard, but a change of pace is much needed at the moment.  So we're headed home to France to move back into our home, get to work on Taka Technologies and house renovations, see our friends who we have sorely missed during the past year and generally pick up the threads of our life there.

Before I officially end this account of our sabbatical year and move onto the next phase of this blog, I will be back with one last post sharing some thoughts and reflections on this past year, so stay tuned.  I'm ending this post with some photos of the the marina where Taka Trois is moored and its wildlife.  If you're in the mood to learn something about the island of St. Barths, scroll down to the post just before this one which, truth be told, should've been posted weeks ago, but, well, I've been a little busy...