Many of our cruising friends have spent Christmas at sea, or have even made landfall on Christmas Day, but we have been fortunate and have always been anchored somewhere pleasant, enjoying a relaxed Christmas Day with friends.

Particular cruising areas tend to have favoured Christmas spots. For example, in the Caribbean, the Tobago Cays is popular for Christmas Day, and Bequia for New Year. In South East Asia, Phuket (Thailand) is where everyone heads for Christmas.

Christmas tends to be a very sociable time for cruisers. As early as October the radio scheds start buzzing with plans for where to meet for Christmas. Although everyone is far from home, their own cultural traditions are practiced as far as is practical, so yachts are adorned with lights and trimmings and Christmas trees sprout from the tops of masts, the ends of booms, perched on bowsprits, and no end of other ingenious places. (It helps that sailors are skilled in lashing bits to a boat.) Brian programs our B&G repeaters to flash red and green and we decorate the deckhouse with Christmas lights.

Last year we spent Christmas in Phuket with a cruising family, and with friends who had flown out from the UK. Happily we had been in Singapore the previous month, so we were well-stocked with Christmas trimmings--crackers, Christmas pudding, and mincemeat for the mince pies. Our turkey had traveled with us all the way from Australia.

Cooking a full-blown Christmas meal in a yacht galley in 30+ degrees Celsius can be a bit of a challenge, but when you can jump over the side to cool off it's not such a trial (the trick is to do it without spilling your drink). Last year we opted for a traditional English Christmas meal, but it hasn't always been so. For our first Christmas on THETA VOLANTIS we were in the Caribbean and spent the day with some Australian friends. "Let's BBQ on the beach!" they said. Being British, our idea of a BBQ was a few burnt sausages and undercooked chicken legs, but the Australians taught us about gourmet BBQ food. On a solid steel plate perched on four rocks they first produced a gastronomique breakfast including frying eggs directly on the plate, then later in the day they barbecued a whole leg of lamb, lobsters and delicious baked yams. We supplied a portable CD player to ensure we had Christmas carols and everyone produced copious amounts of rum and wine. A fine time was had by all.

Everyone makes a special effort to give children a good Christmas. They miss out on the special attention they might normally receive from grandparents, aunts/uncles and cousins, just as cruising grandparents miss seeing their grandchildren, but the cruising community is fairly small so when everyone gets together for Christmas it feels like an extended family. There is always someone willing to dress up as Santa and arrive by dinghy with a sack full of presents.

For us one of the best things about Christmas on the boat is that we get to take our home to wherever we have decided to spend Christmas, and the only traveling we have to do thereafter is a quick dinghy ride to another yacht or the beach. We think this compares highly favourably to hours spent in traffic jams at the height of the holiday traffic peak, driving from one set of relatives to another.

Have a happy Christmas and we wish you good cruising in 2004.

Colleen and Brian