December marks one year since we bought our boat. A year of living in paradise, of learning new skills and chasing down new challenges everyday. And so, after we’ve sailed to 9 different countries and made countless friends, it feels a good time to reflect on all that we have experienced in the last 12 months.
DECORATING ONBOARD
To celebrate our first year on the boat, we have decorated our saloon with red, green and gold. We don’t have space onboard to store Christmas decorations for the rest of the year so instead we make our own and keep things simple – a driftwood Christmas tree, paper streamers and hand-written lyrics from Christmas carols on our walls.
We try and slow down our pace of life during the month of December and so spending an afternoon scouting the beach for driftwood to build our Christmas tree, and then searching for sea shells to decorate it with, is a wonderful way to appreciate where we are in the world and what we are celebrating.
ADVENT CALENDAR
We open our homemade calendar each day to find the names of our friends and family inside. We love the tradition of displaying their names in our home so that we are surrounded by those that we love, and it’s a lovely reminder to get in touch at what can be a busy time of year.
Particularly as we started this nomadic lifestyle during the pandemic, we have not had any family or friends visiting us from home. At what can be a lonely and isolating time of year, we recognise that we are not alone but part of a much bigger community, even if we cannot always be together.
MUSIC
As musicians, the songs we listen to are hugely important in helping us get in the festive mood. Now that we have our guitars onboard, hardly a day goes by that we don’t pull them out into the cockpit and play a few songs.
This year, we found ourselves on the small island of Bequia in St Vincent and the Grenadines which has a very active community of cruisers, all keen to celebrate together during the festive period. We took our guitars along to a musician’s Christmas jam night in a local bar and enjoyed playing a few songs accompanied by a trombone and a steel pan – not our usual sound but we absolutely loved it!
CREATING TRADITIONS
Being so far from family and friends, it can be difficult at certain times of year when we can’t join in with the gatherings and celebrations. And so we decided to create some new traditions that are better suited to life on a boat. If we are in an anchorage with other boats, we like to make Christmas cards and deliver them to everyone in the bay. It’s a nice way to meet other sailors and we sometimes take some Christmas baking with us too.
We usually sail to somewhere new on Dec 23rd and then enjoy Christmas Eve listening to Carol concerts and decorating the boat. We also call our families as Christmas Day is usually too busy.
On Christmas Day itself we are usually on our own so we take some time to enjoy nature – whether that’s a hike up a nearby hill or going scuba diving at a local reef. We might eat a special meal but local foods often replace the more traditional turkey that we are used to! Ultimately we just try to enjoy where we are and the wonderful opportunities that this lifestyle offers.
LOCAL CELEBRATIONS
One of our favourite things about living this nomadic lifestyle is learning about and experiencing different cultures from around the world. And Christmas time is such a great time to join in with local festivals and events.
This year, in St Vincent, we were thrilled to take part in a local festival, a traditional celebration that takes place every morning from 16th-24th December. Unfortunately the traditional time for the music and games to start is 4am and things wrap up by 7am to allow the crowds to disperse in time for work….and that’s far too early for us to be up and about!
Thankfully there is also a twin festival called Nine Nights of Lights, which is at the much more sociable hour of 7pm. We wandered around the botanical gardens in the dark, enjoying the light displays and seeing some fantastic costumes (even a goat wearing some fairy lights as it was taken for a walk on a lead!) And the music was something else – local steel pan bands playing incredible versions of Christmas carols as we lost ourselves in the beautifully decorated gardens. Where else would we experience that??
EXPECTATIONS
December can be a month filled with unrealistic expectations, social pressures and financial burdens but as we lean how to simplify our needs, we are also learning how to live in the present and soak up every moment. And so with that in mind, we try to remove the expectations of Christmasses long ago and just enjoy the celebrations for whatever they end up being.
JOIN US
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