At the start of December Teo noticed that the month on the wall calendar we made together has the red writing and he got really excited because you know what that means… Christmas (and Santa) comes near the end of the month! This lifestyle allows us to corral Christmas to a single month, there is only Christmas music decorations etc in December. We have an early Christmas present in the form of three lovely families afloat to keep us company. As December progressed the kids got more and more excited and our time was filled with Christmas preparations. Santa hats were made and worn for lots of lovely activities, including a giggle filled afternoon of water sports behind the Calle II dinghy. It was so much fun to waterski again, and in a Santa hat for comic effect!
We made only a handful Christmas cards this year. We recycled charts we picked up from book swaps and cut out trees and pasted them onto card. We are very proud of how nice they looked. We also made ornaments from coral we spent months collecting, only the heart shaped ones, please! They are simple and I can see us hanging them on our tree for years to come. We sent small parcels home and when we went to the post office we had to gulp at the cost of being so far away.
In our anchorage off the town in Makemo, our very creative, enthusiastic friends on Larki invited everyone over for Christmas craft session complete with Christmas music blaring, cinnamon buns all around and glogg ala Calle II. Each boat organised an ornament for the kids to make and the results were wonderful, especially when they added their own special touches. The afternoon felt like the workshop in the North Pole, with cutting and drilling and gluing and painting and beads and sparkles. One of my favourite memories of this Christmas season is the separate afternoon the ladies escaped and did some crafts on their own with more glogg and cake and giggles on Calle II.
Itchy Foot hosted a jewellery making workshop for the kids. Thank goodness Fi came with a ton of jewellery making things and beads. It was a flurry of excitement and creativity and surprising patience, too. There were moments of “oh no this is backwards” and “now I have to do it over since I dropped the end and beads bounced everywhere!” Every one of the eight kids left with a wrapped present to put under the tree for their mums and even some for dads and sisters. It was a fun afternoon and it was lovely to see the wonderful creations everyone made and it was also a treat to see the kids help each other. And I must say the earrings Teo made for Mia are gorgeous!
Around the 17th of December we sailed from Makemo in the Tuamotus up to Uo Pou in the Marquesas, about six days of bashing into the wind and waves… but more on that another time. When we arrived at Ua Pou on December 22nd we were happy to put our upwind passage behind us and even the rolly anchorage was not going to squash the Christmas spirit. The anchorage was breathtaking in its beauty with high cliffs and crashing waves. The kids were excited to come and watch movies onboard Itchy Foot and the men went on a foraging mission. They went to find a shop for some fresh ingredients for Christmas meals.
There were also Christmas secrets and the kids spent many hours on Larki to prepare a surprise. One afternoon the adults on Itchy Foot made use of the time to decorate and prepare for the big day. We took out the tree that always reminds us of our friends on Sta Vast (oh, how we wish they were still out here cruising with us!) and we hung the tree in a hammock so it wouldn’t tip over when we did. We felt like Santa’s helpers as we wrapped presents and brought out the cards and parcels lovingly delivered to us by hand when Jon’s parents were visiting. We are very pleased to note that for the whole of our Christmas, there was not one visit to a shopping center, HO HO HO!
The day of Christmas Eve was full of cheer- lots of Christmas music, crafts and visiting each other bringing small parcels and goodies. The kids all made each other presents and it was really lovely to see how proud they were to hand them over. Each visiting dinghy were also singing Christmas carols. We had lots of lovely presents to open, especially Teo. A big thank you to family who made a big effort to send parcels with visiting dignitaries. Jon made incredible Christmas Eve dinner of duck and roast vegetables. After our lovely family dinner together on the 24th we joined our lovely friends for dessert on Casablanca. Martin is a very brave man to open his nearly new shiny catamaran to four boisterous families. It was a magical evening with lovely games and delicious desserts and singing and dancing around the tree.
While the boys had been on their foraging quest before Christmas, they met a lovely local man also named Martin who invited us to Christmas Day Mass at the local church including a lunch buffet afterwards. This was a beautiful, musical and delicious affair. Everyone was wearing their very best outfits and flowers in their hair and there was much singing and drumming. Our host, Martin was ordained into a position in the church and it was reason for much rejoicing. Part of the buffet was pig roasted in the ground and we were invited to watch as they retrieved it. The pit was lined with banana leaves and volcanic rocks and they pulled out basket upon basket of food. Later we ate alongside the congregation and all the dishes were incredible, especially the pork. The baskets they cooked in were beautiful creations, woven specially for this purpose with handles to make the food easier to unpack. The lush countryside of the Marquesas is very good to its people. Especially the fruit that grows here is incredible! It was a wonderful way to spend Christmas Day.
But Christmas wasn’t over yet. There was a wonderful Christmas concert planned by the kids and facilitated by the parents on Larki. Everyone worked very hard and the first part of the performance were solo acts by all the kids. Teo played “Twinkle Twinkle” on the recorder and afterwards said “That was nerve wracking!” And the second part was a collaboration of “T’was the Night Before Christmas” and was wonderful, complete with sugarplums dancing, Dad in his hat, reindeer antlers, coconut hooves, and an awesome St. Nick. And when it got dark there was a little Lucia tog organised by Calle II. To get a feel of the spirit please check out the video Larki made of the festivities, there is a link on our Facebook page.
After Christmas we moved a remote bay that was less rolly and rang in the new year. Panacea hosted a kick ass party with lots of bubbles and a potluck. Stine and Sonia from Calle II organised a music quiz and there was dancing! We all made it to three hours past cruisers midnight and welcomed 2019. We were probably in the least populated time zone on the planet as when it was midnight in London, it was still 1430 here, you have to love the half hour time zones! It has been an amazing year for us on Itchy Foot, Happy 2019 everyone!