Authors preamble: I started writing this last year, it may suffer from mixed tenses but we are all adults and it’s been intense.

As inked earlier Saint Maarten the place to be in this part of the world if you are a super yacht or crew. Having been here for a week now I can safely scribe my own opinion. In a nut shell Saint Maarten is deliciously decadent. With filthy French and dirty Dutch hemispheres a wayward sailor is easily stimulated with very little effort. The three ways of spelling the islands name show the multitude of ways the island can be approached.

Witness photographic evidence of our very first night out in Saint Maarten. That is me and Lord Lovejoy sucking back on some premium Cuban cigars. Don’t we look postively chuffed with ourselves?

I love hot sauce. I met my match in Saint Maarten. This hot sauce blew my head off and made me cry.

Pay close attention to the label.

How do improve a sublime mojito?

Well, you freeze it.

With a very busy couple of weeks ahead Anna and I checked into a quite tasty hotel/resort for the weekend on the French/Dutch border. We had a few vague plans of what we would do but what transpired was about as rockstar of a weekend as we have had without throwing a television into the adjoining swimming pool.

Things started less than innocently with a couple of cocktails while we waited for our room to be ready. It continued with a free bottle of champagne which inspired us to head to the in house Casino. Did I mention the hotel was huge, Kiwi’s it was at least the size of a decent sized paddock.

We won a lot of money and started furiously socialising and tipping (when the icing of your disposable income comes from tips, tipping becomes very important). The free rum punches began to take hold and some less than astute bets were made. At two am it was time to retire to our room. Room service was miraculously ordered. I promptly fell asleep dreaming of frozen cocktails. Apparently when the room service arrived Anna tried to feed me, I responded in kind with a flailing arm much like a chaotic one armed bandit. Anna then achieved a masterstroke, she spilt a lot of San Pellegrino on her laptop.

The next morning I awoke to a few frights, the first of which was a rash covering my chest and legs. It appears my working class skin is averse to 300 count cotton sheets, that or the washing powder used in the hotel. I am going with former, it is far more dashing. The second was that the hotel room looked trashed.The third was that Anna’s beautiful pink laptop had died, was not going to be bought back to life and our planned shopping trip to duty free gadget land Philipsburg had taken on a new dimension. After some a therapeutic buffet breakfast wearing our darkest sun glasses possible we caught a taxi to Philipsburg.

Philipsburg is a cruise ship town, it literally throngs and fades with the entrance and egress of cruise ships. After some zig zag staggering and half hearted bartering with shops we purchased a nice shiney new iPad for Anna. Still feeling pretty rotten, we joined the dinner time rush and went to our first American style KFC. We was hungry. Deep perceptive impressions from this outing are as follows,

• Meal deals do not come with moro bars or upsize options.
• Fast food in the Caribbean works in another slow time zone.
• The checkout lady was really funny, like hilarious.

Leaving Philipsburg our taxi was stolen by a family of Brazilians. We had waited half an hour for it at a stand, and this family stole it right before our eyes. Having not had many dealings with Brazilians we actually thought they were Italian, we looked so woebegone they thought we were American. This slight has been noted and I will be taking it up with the next Brazilian I speak to. Whilst I am at it, Portuguese sounds like Spanish spoken by a retard. Thanks Russell Peters.

The rest of the weekend was a lot less rockstar. We did some secret santa shopping in the foyer shops of the hotel. Got a late check out of 3pm and made our way back to our home with the satisfied feeling of having spent a lot of money; eating, drinking and sleeping. Ah the beauty of consumerism.

What else have I learned about Saint Martin. Well it is here that I must tip my hat to my roving reporter and cultural attache Lord Lovejoy. He has busied himself about the Island taking photos and making memories so I can be more selective about where I go.

The Saint Maartin Airport is a one of a kind, The end of the runway backs onto a beach and it is an unofficial tourist attraction to hold on the airport fence and get thrown back by the force of the jet engines.

There are a lot of Casinos here, like 12. For someone that visits Casino’s once or twice a year I studiously doubled my quota last year and have already reached my goal for this year. Did I mention we are going to be here till April or May? Saint Maartin is a floating Vegas. If I did not have so many family members reading and was not such a prude I would rabbit on about vast array of Strip Clubs.

What I can do now is post a flyer for a party that is on this weekend.

Since the new year a sea change has enveloped our crew. 11 out of the 13 are engaged in some form of exercise and/or diet regime. I have thrown myself into this along with beautification. This evening I had a pedicure from a charming latino man who wanted to paint my toe nails. I reclined and gracefully declined. Maybe next time.

What next? Well work of course and there are some more traditional tourist attractions to engage in like zip lining. We are also hoping to get an apartment and live ashore. Imagine that!

I can feel the masses clamoring for more information on James. There could be a crew profile on the way.

Till that painted toe nail next time. Ciao.