March 16th, St. Maarten

7 am I woke up and opened the deck doors (in total Sarah fashion), then crawled back into bed, enjoying the sound of the water as the ship sliced through it. The water is so amazing down there! I got up and took a shower, then went outside and watched St. Maarten grow closer. We ordered room service and ate out on the balcony. We finished up and it was time to get off the ship and explore St. Maarten.
There are 40 people in our group on this cruise, and 32 people all pitched in and reserved a catamaran for the day.
We sailed off the Coast and ate cheese, fruit, breads, and sipped on Cold Rum punch. St. Maarten is incredible. I don't know that I've ever seen clearer water. Almost glass like. After an hour or two, the catamaran pulled into a cove and they pulled out snorkel gear. Ben, being part fish, jumped in immediately and started exploring the Caribbean waters.

I unfortunately saw a barracuda in the water and panicked a bit but I eventually got in. Again, the water was incredibly clear and you could see down to the bottom with no effort. At one point we swam into a school of fish with what must have been thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of fish spiraling in a tornadic fashion, changing directions and moving as one at all times. I was fascinated by the shear beauty of it... then a pellican came and ate one of the fish. Oops! It was still pretty before the violence, at least. We found a few more schools of fish, a crab, and I think I found Dorie from Finding Nemo at one point. We snorkeled for a long while, then headed back to the boat. The crew took us to a BBQ place right off the shore. They brought us ribs and chicken, both of which were just falling off the bone. After eating, we all went into a comatose state and just relaxed until we finally hit land again.


We went back to our room on the ship and laid down for a while, then got ready for dinner. This night was one of two formal nights, which is fun because all the boys get dressed up. Ben wore a nice suit and I wore what I like to think is a very cute dress. :) After dinner we made our way to the Rendevous Bar for Karaoke Night... not being one to pass up on Karaoke, I gave a little Bangles action for all to enjoy. We had people singing songs from Grease, Barry White, and even a bit of Alanna Miles. Seeing that our group was about 15% of the crowd, we frequently had some one to cheer on, which made it fun. We became known as "The Karaoke People" for the rest of the cruise. We went to bed about 1am, exhausted, but having a great time!