They have arrived! After so much anticipation we are at the small Antigua airport. It is surprisingly busy with quite a few flights touching down in short progression. We wait patiently. Or not so patiently. Customs must be very busy and it takes quite a while. But finally we catch the familiar sight of our daughter and son as they walk out. We are reunited, for the first time since early August.
Anika and Krissi are best friends and spent a few days together at Anika’s in Amsterdam before flying out. They have many stories to share during our quick taxi ride back to Jolly Harbour. It has gotten dark by the time we get back to the boat.
Anika has been on JACE before but for Krissi it is the first time. We do the “castle tour” and explain some of the details. Cabins are assigned and their small bags (boy, they travel light) stowed. The kids take a quick swim and change into climate-appropriate attire. Meanwhile we cook and then enjoy a lovely meal in our cockpit. It gets fairly late, considering jet lag, before we turn in for their first night aboard.
In our family, Christmas Eve is the big day and it follows a very carefully developed and much loved routine every year. This year it is obviously all different. We try to hang on to some traditions and improvise otherwise. A big breakfast. More swimming. Decorating the boat with Christmas lights. A few chores – we need to top up our water tank and get some last groceries – followed by coffee.
That’s when the kids surprise us with the sweetest present – both literally and figuratively: they baked us Christmas cookies, “Heidesand” and “Vanillekipferl”, recipes I grew up with and just love so much. We are touched that they thought of that and took the time and effort to get the recipe from their grandmother, bake them, and bring them all the way here. And they taste so good!
One of the longstanding traditions of our California Christmas is to have tacos and burritos for lunch. Don’t ask where that came from.
In following that custom, we dinghy into Jolly Harbour and enjoy a very fun and delicious dinner at La Cantina, the local Mexican restaurant we happened to spot the day before.
After returning, we make it festive and flick on our Christmas decoration, make the cockpit cozy, and put out tea and the cookies. We talk and laugh.
Then presents. Somehow we managed to amass a small collection. Before we know it, the process gets gamified involving D&D dice of various shapes and new rules: highest roll, you pick a new present from the pile, lowest roll, you steal an already opened gift from someone else. The more presents you have, the tougher your dice and therefore odds. Having a child studying game design at university does have implications, apparently. We have the best time and take hours to open our few little presents and many of them, like the hat, change hands – or heads – many times.
It is a very different yet oh so wonderful Christmas for us four that we will probably remember for a while to come. And tomorrow we want to start sailing northeast on our trek around Antigua.
