Sint Maarten - Facts
- One of the northern Leeward Islands, this small island has been shared between France and the Netherlands since the the Treaty of Concordia was signed in 1648.
- In May 2023, the two countries settled a long running border dispute. The largest change is in Oyster Pond with the border now running through the middle of the pond, thereby giving an equal share of the water to both sides. See this News item for details.
- The southern third – Sint Maarten – is now an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the northern part (St Martin), belongs to the French départment of Guadeloupe.
- Since becoming an autonomous country, Sint Maarten now has a new flag (red over blue with a white triangle at the halyard).
- Sint Maarten has a population of 40,120 with the most populated areas being Lower Prince’s Quarter (north of Philipsburg), followed closely by Cul de Sac.
- The official languages are English and Dutch. Spanish, Creole, Papiamento (a Spanish-Portuguese-Dutch-English dialect) and French are also spoken.
- Netherlands Antillean Guilder or florin is used as currency. For specifics see General Info.
- Time zone in Sint Maarten (GMT-4). For specifics see General Info.
- The island has a tropical marine climate with steady northeast trade winds and moderate temperatures; average rainfall of 150 cm/year; hurricane season stretches from July to November. For specifics see Weather, below, for more info.
- Sint Maarten is more developed than St Martin and cruising attractions include great restaurants, beach bars, white sand beaches, rainforests, coral reefs, and a fascinating colonial history.
- This is a duty-free island, so prices are competitive and parts and spares are easily imported. The island has skilled marine tradesmen and a large number of marinas, boatyards and chandleries with most major services found on this side of the lagoon. See Yachting Essentials for more details.
- Both sides of the island use the IALA-B (green to port) buoyage system.
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Beware Simpson Bay Bridge! They closed it RIGHT in front of us as we were entering the causeway with no VHF 12 notification due to an “emergency vehicle” that turned out to be one police car without any lights flashing. Then they closed it again RIGHT in front of us at 3:06 as we were entering the causeway with no VHF 12 notification. We barely saw the light turn from green to red the second time.
The Customs and Immigration office at the police station next to the Simpson Bay bridge is open 0700-2000 seven days a week. The port office for paying fees is open 0830-1200, 1330-1630 seven days a week.
We visited Sint Maarten in April 2023. Checking in and out of Sint Maarten can be done at the police station adjacent to the bridge in Simpson Bay as well as at the office at the entrance to the port in Great Bay. The Simpson Bay location is convenient. The entrance to the lagoon and a large dumpster are adjacent to the dock that is suitable for dinghies.
The office in Great Bay is inconvenient. It is a bit of a walk, about 1.6km, from the dinghy dock near Bobby’s Marina. There is no sign marking its location. Directions can be obtained from the security guard at the gate.
Note: On clearing out of the country the fees charged at the Great Bay are dramatically greater than those charged at the Simpson Bay. It is only 4nm between the 2 locations. Skippers would be well advised to complete the clearance in Simpson Bay.
Simpson Bay..attempted break in.
July 2023, came back to boat to find individual in dinghy slashing trampoline from their dinghy. Individual swam off and we made police report.
Hi Pauline, thankyou for reporting this frightening incident. Please take a moment to make an incident report with the Caribbean Safety and Security Net, who do such a great job in monitoring and reporting on crime against yachts in the Caribbean. https://safetyandsecuritynet.org/
Theft
Location: Saint Martin (France) – Lagoon – Witch’s Tit
Stolen Items: B&G Zeus3 12” chart plotter
Details: We returned to the catamaran that was moored near Witches Tit between 21-27 May. We found dark shoe prints onboard, leading directly to a missing chart plotter on the starboard helm. The yacht was well locked and the video security system captured the theft. The thief seemed to be aware of the video surveillance and made no attempt to enter the well locked yacht and left other valuable items behind, including the portside instruments and chart plotter.
A police report was made, and the officials indicated that they would visit the yacht, review the video and collect forensics later in the week.
Sea Inbound Procedures status as of April 2021: Port Authority in Simpson Bay requests a Pre-arrival Send out to the following email addresses
surveillance@sintmaartengov.org
And
seaborder.info@policesxm.sx
The Mail shall content as follows:
1. last Clearance
2. boat registration
3. passport copies of crew
4. healt declaration pre-authorization from online clearance site for all crew member
http://www.stmaartenehas.com (obligatory covid insurance – 26€)
5. Antigen (48hrs) or PCR (72 hrs) test copies
6. Crew List
Best
Stephan Dorfmeister
November 2018 – SIMPSON BAY
IGY Simpson Bay Marina has 1 dock available (out of 3). No wifi or fuel.
Electricity was 0.54USD/kWh. Water was either 0.15USD or 0.20USD per gallon (don’t remember exactly). No pumpout available. The surrounding area has a good grocery store (diverse options; prices were on par with any American metropolitan area), good breakfast at Zee Best, and various snack bars/bars/ food along the road. Sidewalks are scarce.
IGY customers have pool access to IGY Isle de Sol (on Snoopy Island). Turtle restaurant at Isle de Sol not open yet; we were told they would be open very soon.
Regarding clearing in or paying the bridge fee – just show up at the bridge, hail on channel 12 to ensure they know you are trying to enter and motor through FAST. They do not like keeping the bridge open for any longer than they have to.
You can take up to 24h to clear into customs. We ended up paying the bridge fee and lagoon fee a couple of days after we arrived because the office was closed when we showed up. Customs office and bridge/lagoon payment office have different hours. There is a dinghy dock for the customs/bridge office, just outside the bridge. You can anchor inside and then dinghy to the office. They also have a dumpster for cruisers at the police station parking lot.
The party boat is docked right next to the Dinghy Dock Bar and will be there for a while for repairs. Meanwhile, they are still partying hard. Do not anchor too close to them (noisy!). Soggy Dollar Bar also had a lot of noise on some nights. Lots of large flies and sand gnats in the anchorage. Good luck…
Budget Marine is very similar to West Marine in the States. Their inventory is more sparse than normal, due to looting after Irma. They still have a lot of stuff though. Prices are reasonable. Island Water World is a much more dense space and seems to be more fully stocked (especially for electronics, dive equipment, fishing, and books). Prices may be higher than Budget Marine for most items.
Also, their dinghy dock is more crowded. Note that their dinghy dock is split into two parts — the north half is for short-term parking and the south half is for long term parking. They have water and a fuel dock at reasonable rates (approx 1USD/L for diesel; water was cheaper than at IGY Simpson Bay but don’t quite remember.)
Mega ACE Hardware is a short uphill walk from Island Water World. Be careful; there is no sidewalk and the street was slippery in places. Also a lot of stray dogs. This ACE is large and has a lot of inventory.
November 2018 – MARIGOT
LOTS of wrecks; anchorage gets shallow in places, so stay on the channel as much as possible.
Fuel dock — be prepared to pay in euros. We had trouble trying to pay with USD.
An update from Island Global Yachting (IGY):
In the wake of Hurricane Irma and Maria, the IGY Yacht Club at Isle de Sol and IGY Simpson Bay Marina, are currently under repair. As of September 19th, 2017, the airport in St. Maarten was not open to commercial carriers, however, was accepting private aircraft and humanitarian relief flights.
St. Maarten has several hotels that remain open, however, due to the airport being closed, are currently being used as relief centers. Several banks are open and welcoming customers with some having cash withdrawal limits in place.
All IGY Caribbean marinas will be partially operational for the upcoming 2017/18 Winter Season and are expected to include crew amenities such as; the gymnasium, swimming pool, and food and beverage outlets within our facilities gated locations.
March 30 2017- Dropping off / picking up crew at the docks along airport road is now frowned upon. We were successful at the dock behind the Hertz Rent A Car lot, but not at the ferry terminal, or office adjacent.
The other docks were all in a state of disrepair. We did not try the marina that is just past the Airport going toward the French side. Note also that on older charts the Anguilla ferry terminal has moved and is now located adjacent to the airport and is staffed by customs agents.
SY Vent de Soleil
Comment to above post regarding pay enters in fee in advance. Don’t ask so many questions on channel 12. Call up the bridge, let them know you’re standby for entering the lagoon. That’s all they need to know. You sail in and do what you do, put anchor or go to your berth.
Then when you’re all settled, take a bus or whatever to the customs office at the bridge, clear in or pay what you need to pay. You’ll have a pleasant entrance to the country in that way. Cheers Peter
Our experience with Sint Maarten harbour authorities does not quite indicate that sailors are appreciated and regarded as a resource. Apart from paying fees of course.
One should think that professionally keeping track of practices and being able to provide service and correct information to sailors would be part of their job. Sint Maarten, the Dutch side of the island, has only two ports of entry. Sailors entering at one of them and leaving at the other should be no unexpected event.
The customs/harbour office in Philipsburg is not so conveniently located for an anchored sailor, so I called the harbourmaster on VHF to check if I could pay the anchoring fees in Simpsons Bay when later checking out from there.
Check-in had been in Philipsburg. I was told this was not possible due to separate systems. So I walked to the harbour authorities office to pay the fee. They could not understand why I was coming and told me it would be better to pay the fee when checking out in Simpson Bay! The harbourmaster must have misadvised me they said. OK, OK…
Upon arriving in Simpson Bay and waiting for the bridge to open into the lagoon, I called the bridge on VHF 12 and asked if it was necessary to pay the bridge fee in advance, as I would anyway have to go to the offices to check out. I was told to call a phone number. The number is given in the Doyle guide, so this might be expected.
However, none of my SIM cards was able to complete the call. Time before the bridge opening was approaching, and a visit to the offices by dinghy might have caused us to miss it if there was a queue. So I called the bridge again and asked if they could get me the information because I was not able to call on the phone. There was almost no VHF traffic. After answering the initial call, the operator just refused to communicate with me anymore.
So then there was no option but to hurry to the harbour office before the bridge opened. They said I had to pay before entering the lagoon.
When I told them I was upset because there was no answer on the VHF, the clerk said: “Well, that is not how we do it here”.
So, being helpful to sailors (customers) is not the way they do it at the bridge in Simpson Bay.
A supervisor, overhearing this conversation, said she would check on it.
As sailors often experience, the authorities want our money. Giving good service to sailors is not quite as interesting.
Don’t know. We’re under 20t I just checked our records and we paid $48 to clear into Simpson Bay in Nov 2014 for 1 week. Then paid $24 to clear into Marigot Bay and stayed about 3 weeks before leaving to go to Anguilla plus Prickly Pear.
($88) and St Barts ($26) then back to Marigot Bay and another $24.Might be missing something but I don’t see any other charges. We bought water in Simpson Bay for $23 for 80 gals.
Do the Harbor fees apply to vessels anchored in Great Bay, Philipsburg or only those in Simpson’s Bay and the Lagoon?
Bad surprise when clearing out! Please be aware that Sint Maarten charges you for using “their” water. Next to a clearance fee of 2.15 US$ and Pilotage in 8.67 US$ and out 4.34 US$ they charge 16.25 US$ per week for a 20 t ships (called departure fee).
Not enough – in addition, they want to have 0.091 US$ per ton and day. For this i had to pay 90 days * 20 tons * 0.091 = 109.20 US$. All in all … 270.61 US$ for “nothing”.
Posted on Yahoo Cruisers Network Online – 3 February 2015
The fee for entering through the Dutch side bridge depends on length. 12 meters or less is $7 US. The costs go up if you are larger. Every week you stay on the Dutch side costs $20 US. Dutch C/I is at the Bridge and you actually see 2 people (not 3).
It costs 5 Euros each day to anchor in Marigot Bay on the French Side with an initial charge of 20 Euros when you first arrive if you anchor in Marigot Bay. There is no charge for anchoring anywhere else on the French Side, either outside or inside the Lagoon.
The channel from the French side bridge has shifted because of hurricane Gonzolo and varies because the marks are also missing. It is best to enter through the Dutch side bridge and then go through the new Causeway bridge to the French Side. There is no charge for the French Side bridge.
Most people come in the Dutch Side and then decide either to anchor or just proceed to the French Side and check in, once in the lagoon. Or you can just anchor in Marigot Bay with lots of room (because of the daily charge).
We left Sint Maarten/St. Martin 3 days ago so this information is current.
Jan. 17, 2014 – French bridge currently experiencing problems and appears to not be opening (our friends had to go out the other bridge yesterday). Dutch Bridge has new times not shown in cruising guides and most web sites.
New times effective Nov 15 are posted here http://www.smyc.com/content/new-simpson-bay-causeway-bridge-opening-hours (these match what the Dutch bridge authority gave us last week).
SY Day Dreamer