Friday, May 31st, 2002
Amie's Visit
Saint Maarten, Netherlands Antilles

I love Amie. Amie rocks. We met back in San Francisco when I first moved there and have been fast friends ever since. She's been working in Orlando, Florida the past year and has traveled the Caribbean sailing with her family over her lifetime, so her close proximity and familiarity with the area seemed like a good recipe for her recent long weekend visit.

In true Amie fashion, she showed up with a handsome set of king size sheets for us. Of course, they're 100% cotton! And a cute Nautica pillow for good measure. Knowing how hard it can be to get certain items here in the tropics, she had offered to pick up whatever we'd need. Little did she know that the sheets she had brought would actually be so important for her own comfort (poor Gus had to stick it out with our first set of "bad" sheets). It's been so hot here these past few days, the comfier cooler sheets did save her entirely from discomfort, but I hope they helped at least a bit. Anyway, we were grateful for the thoughtful gift as she refused to let us reimburse her for them as we had originally planned.

Amie rocks and I am a heel. As we sat in the cockpit of Force Five talking a million miles a minute trying to catch-up, she mentioned in passing how unfun it was to spend her birthday on a plane that day and we had best get out and have some fun now. OUCH. I forgot today was her birthday. Bad, bad, horrible friend. Just add it to the list of things I'm going straight to hell for. How could I forget such an important day for such an important friend? I am such a jerk. Well, as she had said, best to get out and have some fun now!

We took her to Lady C, which of course she had heard so much about. As you might expect, we ran into Jerry and Heather, and a number of other characters you've already heard us speak of. Seems everyone wanted one last night out in Saint Maarten as the mass migration of cruisers southbound is in progress. From there, we took her to the Saint Maarten Yacht Club for dinner with Jerry. Here you're likely thinking I've redeemed my forgetful episode and taken her to a fancy dinner. Unfortunately while I love the Yacht Club, it is certainly not fancy. It's actually an old shipping container that they've made into a makeshift clubhouse. But the food really is good and the company jovial. We had a good time.

To be continued:

(we have to set sail for Statia today so the Amie section must wait)

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