Sint Maarten & the Dutch/French Caribbean

The shape of a shared island

Sint Maarten and Saint-Martin are one island of roughly 87 square kilometres split by a land border rather than water, Dutch Sint Maarten holding the southern third at about 34 square kilometres and French Saint-Martin the northern two-thirds at about 53. Philipsburg on Great Bay is the Dutch capital and the cruise ship town, Marigot on the French side is the smaller and quieter seat of government, and neither is where the yachts lie. That is Simpson Bay Lagoon, the enclosed water on the island's west side that the border also crosses, so a boat at anchor can drift from one country's jurisdiction into the other's inside ten minutes.

The two sides answer to different capitals. Sint Maarten has been an autonomous constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands since the Netherlands Antilles dissolved on 10 October 2010. Saint-Martin has been a French overseas collectivity in its own right, separate from Guadeloupe, since 15 July 2007, and remains part of both France and the European Union. Neither status is cosmetic. It sets which customs code applies, which side clears a commercially registered yacht, and which currency and language a crew works in a few hundred metres apart. Provisioning benefits from the split rather than suffering from it: the island is fed by two supply chains, Dutch and French, and carries a mix of American and European stock that no single-flag Caribbean island matches.

Getting there

Princess Juliana International, SXM, sits on the lagoon's south-west shore and is the reason this island works for an owner with limited patience. One runway, 2,300 metres by 45 metres, carried about 1.8 million passengers in 2025 against about 1.6 million in 2024, and the final approach is the most photographed in the Caribbean: arriving aircraft cross Maho Beach at well under 100 feet, close enough that spotters gather on the sand under the flight path every day the trade winds allow it. KLM flies Amsterdam and Air France flies Paris Charles de Gaulle year round, Air Caraibes adds Paris Orly seasonally, and American, Delta, JetBlue and United connect the US hubs, so a European guest changes only once.

Below the airline network, two ferry runs and a private aviation ramp fill in the rest. The Marigot to Anguilla crossing takes about 20 minutes and runs close to hourly through the day at roughly USD 30 one way plus a separate Anguilla arrival tax, and a Philipsburg to Gustavia service reaches St Barths in 45 minutes to an hour depending on the operator. SXM handles business jet traffic on a dedicated ramp, which is why charter guests routinely fly into St Maarten to join a yacht lying somewhere else entirely, but Yotters could not find a published annual movement count for that traffic and treats the figure as unconfirmed. On the ground, taxi fares are set by government tariff rather than metered, and no current published rate for the airport run to Simpson Bay could be confirmed, so agree the fare before the bags go in.

The bridge opens seven times a day in one direction each, and the two flags either side of it clear you differently.

Arriving by sea: the lagoon and its bridges

Simpson Bay Lagoon covers about 1,250 hectares at a maximum depth of about 6 metres, with no swell reaching the water inside it in any conditions, which is why it has been the region's working hurricane refuge for decades. Entry from the Dutch side is the Simpson Bay Bridge, run by the Simpson Bay Lagoon Authority Corporation on VHF 12, opening seven times a day in one direction per opening: 08:30 outbound, 09:30 inbound, 10:30 outbound, 11:30 inbound, 14:00 inbound, 16:00 outbound and 17:00 inbound. The gap is 17.0 metres wide with 6.0 metres of controlling depth, and because the span swings clear rather than lifting there is no air draught limit when it is open. Miss the 17:00 inbound and a yacht lies outside until the next morning. On the French side the Sandy Ground bridge into Marigot is smaller and opens only twice, at 08:30 and 17:00, just 10 metres wide with 3.5 to 3.8 metres of depth; a third crossing, the free Causeway bridge inside the lagoon, opens at 08:00, 10:00 and 16:30 both ways.

Once inside, the choice of marina is a choice of country as much as of berth. On the Dutch shore, IGY Simpson Bay Marina holds 122 slips including 20 for megayachts, to 190 feet or 57.5 metres LOA at up to 13 feet of draught, and its sister IGY Yacht Club Isle de Sol a few hundred metres away takes 40 megayacht berths from 80 to 320 feet, 97 metres, at 18 feet of draught with an in-water shipyard on site. The Yacht Club at Port de Plaisance at Cole Bay, a BluWater property rather than an IGY one, is quoted at 70 slips on its own site and at more than 90 by independent trade listings, a discrepancy Yotters could not resolve, taking vessels from 40 to somewhere between 260 and 280 feet at 16 to 17 feet of draught depending on the source. Bobby's Marina at Philipsburg's Great Bay, founded in 1968 by Robert Bobby Velasquez and the oldest yard on the island, berths to 130 feet at 12 feet of depth. On the French side, Marina Fort Louis in the heart of Marigot holds 150 berths at 3.6 metres, about 12 feet, taking yachts to 260 feet, and is the one marina on the island reached without passing a bridge at all.

The refit and service industry

This is one of the biggest yacht service clusters in the Caribbean, and the trade is concentrated around the lagoon on both flags. IMM, International Marine Management, runs its SXM Cole Bay Shipyard with 150 and 75 ton travelifts handling up to a 33 foot beam, and Bobby's own yard at Philipsburg runs 75 and 100 ton lifts alongside its marina berths, covering haul-out, mast stepping, mechanical repair, welding and coatings on site. On the French side, Time Out Boat Yard at Sandy Ground works as DIY dry storage rather than a full-service yard, which suits an owner planning his own hurricane-season lay-up. Riggers, electronics specialists, fabricators and coatings crews sit within the same few hundred metres on both shores, and yacht agents including BWA Yachting run their Caribbean headquarters from Plaza del Lago at Simpson Bay Marina, bundling clearance, berthing and bunkering into one call.

Hurricane Irma reshaped the industry as much as it damaged it. The storm crossed the island on 6 September 2017 as a category 5, and post-storm counts put roughly 95 percent of the buildings on both sides as damaged, with total losses across Sint Maarten and Saint-Martin estimated at about USD 7.15 billion. The lagoon alone held 139 wrecked vessels, all removed under an Emergency Debris Management Project that cost about USD 15 million within a USD 25 million debris programme, funded through the Sint Maarten Trust Fund and later topped up to about USD 85 million in total. The World Bank's own account, published in 2024, quotes ship inspector Paul Ellinger saying the island can now say it has an exceptionally clean lagoon. One direct legacy sits in the yard rules: Time Out now dismasts and straps down every boat, mono or multihull, for the whole of hurricane season, 1 August to 1 November, a policy adopted after 2017 and not before it.

Season and hurricane risk

The dry, high season runs roughly December to April or May, the calmest and most reliably sunny stretch and the one the charter fleet and the airlift are built around. Hurricane season is the Atlantic standard, 1 June to 30 November, with the real risk concentrated in August, September and October. The Dutch Leewards sit toward the southern edge of the main Atlantic hurricane belt, which historically has made a direct hit here less frequent than further north, and Irma is the exception that overturned that comfort rather than the rule that disproves it. A storm that reaches the lagoon finds the whole regional fleet sheltering in the same enclosed water, which is the source of the risk as much as the shelter from it.

The fixed date that defines the season is the St Maarten Heineken Regatta, which started in 1980 as a 12 boat local race, took on Heineken as title sponsor in 1983 and grew into what its own organisers and independent sailing press both call the largest regatta in the Caribbean, and very possibly the largest warm-water regatta anywhere, with a record 284 boats in 2008. The 46th edition ran 5 to 8 March 2026, and the 47th is already fixed for 4 to 7 March 2027. Robbie Ferron, the Dutch South African sailor who founded the Sint Maarten Yacht Club and has run the event for decades, has described simply getting stuck here after arriving on a boat, which is close to the regatta's own reputation: the racing is serious, the parties are not, and berths on both sides of the lagoon are booked out months ahead of race week.

Two flags, one island, two clearance systems

Sint Maarten has two ports of entry, Simpson Bay and Great Bay at Philipsburg. At Simpson Bay, Customs and Immigration share a building with walk-up windows on the first floor of the police station beside the bridge, with a current cruising guide giving Customs 08:00 to 19:00 and Immigration 07:00 to 16:00 daily, though the Marine Trade Association's own clearance page does not confirm those hours, so allow 30 to 60 minutes and treat the clock as indicative rather than guaranteed. Clearance is separate again with the Lagoon Authority collection office for the bridge fee. Bring printed papers rather than digital ones, since the Dutch side accepts paper far more reliably, and complete the online embarkation and disembarkation form now required of every arrival. Sint Maarten sits outside the European Union's customs and VAT territory and runs as a duty-free port, which is the commercial engine behind the parts and refit trade described above.

Saint-Martin clears differently again. It is done online through the French government's demarche.numerique.gouv.fr portal with no wet stamp required, is not free, and the Marine Trade Association puts the fee at EUR 5 to 15 payable on completing the declaration; Marina Fort Louis and the Marigot chandleries will process it for a small fee where the site or the connection defeats a crew. Saint-Martin remains part of France and the EU and taxes locally under its own code rather than metropolitan France's, but Yotters could not confirm from two independent sources whether that gives the French side the same blanket duty-free treatment the Dutch side enjoys, and that gap should be checked with an agent before a large order is placed on the French side rather than the Dutch one. Nobody polices the border across the water itself, but a commercially registered yacht in particular needs to know which side she is lying on before an inspector asks.

Costs and what to know before you go

Berth pricing on this island is largely a private negotiation rather than a public rate card. IGY publishes nothing for Simpson Bay Marina beyond a summer dockage special from USD 0.90 a foot a day, which describes the low season and nothing about January. Marina Fort Louis, Bobby's and Port de Plaisance publish no rates at all. The two charges that are published sit outside the berth: the Dutch bridge fee, USD 7 up to about 39 feet rising in steps to USD 500 above 118 feet, paid once against the visit rather than each way, and the French clearance fee of EUR 5 to 15. Fuel is the clearer story on paper if not in price: no supplier on either side publishes a pump rate, but Sint Maarten's duty-free status and a cluster of terminals supplying European-specification ultra-low-sulphur diesel make it one of the cheapest bunkering stops in the Eastern Caribbean by reputation, confirmed by both the island's tourism board and its own marine trade association, even though the number itself is quoted only on the day.

What is genuinely not published, and worth knowing before a booking rather than after: no marina on the island carries a public 2026 rate card, so every quote has to be requested fresh; the berth count at Port de Plaisance is disputed between the operator's own site and independent trade listings and neither Yotters nor, apparently, the trade press has resolved it; and no source gives a reliable annual figure for private jet movements through SXM despite the airport's obvious business aviation trade. Set against that, the things that are unusually well documented for a Caribbean destination are the bridge schedule, the clearance fees on both sides and the scale of the post-Irma rebuild, all independently corroborated and all worth reading before a first visit rather than learning on the water.

Para quién es: An owner or captain who needs the Caribbean's deepest bench of parts, riggers and haul-out capacity within a short hop of St Barths and Anguilla, and who is willing to learn two clearance systems and one drawbridge timetable to get it.