St. Maarten and Random Wind

In St. Maarten, the morning after the Pirate Parade, we woke the kids up early and had breakfast in our room. The kids loved getting room service. We were off the ship a few minutes after 8:00 because we were headed to meet up with Random Wind for a day sail. I emailed Diane twice to make sure it was okay to bring the kids. She said, "of course" both times. The day before our day sail, they had an eight month old baby on the sailboat. In the taxi van, we met another family who was also headed to meet Diane from Random Wind at Skipjacks. I was able to snap a quick photo of Freedom of the Seas from the van.

I missed getting a picture of us riding in the dingy to sailboat.

Once on the sailboat Wesley and Lydia found a nice spot to sit.

At our first stop, Lydia helped feed the fish.

Chris and Wesley snorkeled. I think I forgot to mention that Lydia did snorkel for about a minute at Sapphire Beach but she didn't want to do it any longer. Hopefully, the next time we have the opportunity she will love as much as Wesley does.

The fish Lydia was feeding.

Chris and I thought Josiah would nap in the taxi or at least when we first got on the sailboat, but he didn't. He was a little fussy and I thought, "maybe he will nap after swimming." I put him in a life jacket and I used a swim noodle since I had to help him stay upright.
This isn't a good picture of me, but it's a cute picture of Josiah and Lydia. She kept asking me, "Can we get a boat like this one and live on it." Diane and her two children live on Random Wind.

On the right is Random Wind and on the left is the Golden Eagle. On our only other trip to St. Maarten (our Honeymoon cruise) we went on an excursion on the Golden Eagle.

After playing in the water for a little while, Josiah and I got out. You can see him looking overboard in this picture.

We had a delicious lunch - salad, bread, and curry chicken. After lunch, Wesley, Lydia, and Rachel sat at the front of the boat.

Josiah fell asleep. First I held him, then Chris held, and then this super nice woman held him for us.

We did some more swimming at the second stop. Then we had multiple turns on the trapeze swing.

Here's Wesley.

Lydia.


Me.


Chris.


Diane and Trevor (who is 60). By the way, they were PERFECT hosts.


Wesley also jumped off the front of the boat.


Have you seen the History Channel's Most Extreme Airports? We watched it over the summer. Number four is St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles – "Short-ish runway, high terrain on departure end, proximity to beach on approach end, crazy people “riding the fence” when heavies power up to take off." We watched this 747 take off straight. He made a 90 degree from where he was in the picture and headed for the mountain. He went up quickly and made a sharp turn to the right. It looked like a thrill ride.
After six hours, it was time to leave Random Wind. When we got in the taxi to head back to the ship, we had almost an hour to make the departure time. Traffic was horrible. We were on a two lane road and our lane was stopped. The longer we sat there, not moving, the more I thought about the fact that we could miss the boat. Finally, our driver started driving in the opposite lane when there were no cars coming. When cars would start coming toward us, he would get back over in the right lane. Thankfully, people let him back in line. At one point, he had to wait for traffic to move forward to get back into the right lane and another car had to wait for us to move out of on-coming traffic. Rachel, 9 years old, said, "That car is in the wrong lane. Wait a minute; I think we are in the wrong lane." Her mother and I laughed so hard. It was a great stress reliever.

We finally saw what was causing the problem - they were stopping traffic to let a digger load a dump trunk. Two cars got to go in between the 180 degrees rotation of the digger. Once we were passed the digger, the roads were clear. I gave the driver a nice tip because I was so grateful that he safely drove on the wrong side of the road for us. We got back with a few minutes to spare but I think if he had stayed in the correct lane, we would have been too late. Yes, I know that is a chance you take when you do excursions separate from the cruise lines excursions.

We really had a wonderful day in St. Maarten. Random Wind was a wonderful experience for our family. You can go here if you want to see the photos Diane took that day.