As a sailing cruiser, should you stay on your boat or go home for the holidays? Here are 8 reasons why Christmas is better spent on your boat.
Allow me to provide a bit of background first.
For the past seven years my husband (pictured above), daughter, and I have put our boat on the hard, or in a marina. We’ve done this either in the Mediterranean, Caribbean, or the East Coast. We have then flown ‘home’ to either the UK or America (Rochester, NY or Cary, NC) to spend the holidays with our family.
‘Home’ in this context means the place where we have family/friends. Britican truly is our real home.
This year, however, we’ve done something different.
Due to Covid we’ve been forced to stay put in St Martin, a French island located in the Caribbean. So let me tell you why we’ve realized that Christmas is better spent on your sailboat.
Preparing the boat to leave takes a week and it’s hard work. The cost of storing the boat and having her looked after isn’t insignificant either. And then there’s the cost of flights, rental cars, hotels, gift buying and eating out.
When returning home everyone wants see you. You have to do your best to juggle your time ensuring everyone gets a fair piece of your time. No matter how hard you try someone feels they didn’t get to see you enough.
The stress of traveling, staying in foreign beds, worrying about fitting everything in, getting enough presents for loved ones, and all the money that’s being spent causes massive anxiety.
And because we’re the ones who left we often carry a bit of guilt that we need to make up for living the dream. We do this by stretching ourselves too thin, trying too hard to get the perfect presents, and traveling all over the place to make sure no one is left out. It’s stress city!
Furthermore, for many of us cruisers, when we go ‘home’ we’re not going to a beautiful tropical destination with amazingly deep blue sea views and great weather. We’re often trading paradise for hell. For us, it’s either the rain, sleet, and dark days of England or it’s the cold, damp, gray days on the US east coast.
And a side effect of traveling is that either one or all of us get sick. Living in the fresh air all year long is great but we don’t get bombarded by germs. The downside of that is that when we do get around germs our systems seem to be susceptible to picking up colds.
So why travel to see friends and family when it’s the worst weather of the year and we’re going to pick up a cold, or worse, the flu?
Instead, as a cruiser, you can join the cruisers around you to set up a pot luck Christmas beach party. The expense is minimal and there’s no travel required. You don’t have to buy any presents other than for your immediate family (e.g. your partner and any children on the boat). No one gets sick either.
Cruisers anchored near you can attend and everyone brings a dish to pass so there’s minimal preparation and maximum output. Furthermore, everyone is calm and peaceful because they can simply enjoy the holiday. Yes – cruisers simply enjoy the holiday because there’s nothing else you can do! Isn’t that great?!
And at some other point during the year, when it’s less expensive to travel, the weather is at it’s best, it’s not flu season, and everyone is not running around like a headless chicken, THEN you go ‘home’.
In the past we always felt the pressure to be home for the holidays but due to Covid I’m now realizing that it makes no sense. For the first time ever I am super relaxed, have thousands of more dollars in the bank that I wouldn’t have had if we traveled, and I know that we’re going to spend Christmas Day with a bunch of wonderful people enjoying each other and our beautiful surroundings.
All the commercialism, stress, expense, guilt, and energy spent is ridiculous and now I can clearly recognize the effects it had on me and my family in the past. Another silver lining to Covid?!
And mom – if you’re reading this please don’t take it the wrong way. I do want to be with you and as soon as it’s safe for us to visit we will. I think, however, going forward we’ll visit during the summer and spend quality time when we’re not distracted by the modern madness of the holiday season 🙂
8 Reasons Why Christmas Is Better Spent On Your Sailboat
- Here you go:
- It’s almost stress-free
- Drastically less expensive
- Better weather and far more picturesque
- The preparation for Christmas lunch/dinner is shared amongst many
- Everyone around you is calm, peaceful, and just happy to enjoy the day whereas family and friends back home are often very stressed
- No one picks up a cold or the flu
- There’s little to no pressure to buy many presents for each other due to the fact that there’s nothing to buy
- Time can be spent with family/friends at a better time of year.
Any Thoughts or Suggestions?
Please leave them in the comments below
Carolyn says
Wishing you a Very Happy Christmas…and thinking of you Beach Barbequing as I swim up and down in the pool watching the grey skies and rain outside and freezing my toes off as I take my darling dog for a walk – swapping that for Boat Life cannot be that hard a choice! Fingers crossed for a more normal 2021
Best wishes
Carolyn
Kim Brown says
Thank you Carolyn – here’s to a much better year! Best wishes, Kim
Connie Turnbull says
Wishing your family a wonderful holiday and Happy New Year. We have appreciated reading your articles this past year and wanted to thank you for all your hard work. In April we returned to the States from St Thomas USVI. We left our boat, Sweet Liberty II on the hard. Sorry to say we are still in the States as the boat yard has been stalling getting our boat back in the water. They have used every excuse that too many boats are in front of us. They still tell us they can’t give us a date. Do you know of other boaters having this issue? It appears, with Covid 19 not too many boaters want to put their boats back in the water. We are hoping to return to St Thomas no later than the third week in January. We look forward to meeting you three in person hopefully in 2021. Again, thanks for all you do and for sharing the good times and the challenging times too. Connie and Mike
Kim Brown says
Hey Connie and Mike. Thank you for the lovely note. I have not heard that boats are being blocked regarding getting out but it does make sense. Is there a contract you signed that you can look through? Or can you get the names of the boat owners that are in front of you to find out when they want to get back into the water? With Covid everything is a mess. We’re all hoping that things will be better in 2021! Take care and we will see you soon 🙂 Kim
Joakim Säll says
Happy New Year!
Your reasoning makes great sence! As a matter of fact the threat of covid-19 made christmas more stressfree also for us living an ordinary life. 2020 has been a strange year. For those that have lost familymembers, been sick themselves or lost their job or business it has been terrible. For the rest of us I find that it has been a year of reflection and new pace in life. A time to realize that it is ok not to stress to the office but that you actually can get more done working from home. I really hope 2021 can be all around a better year but I hope we manage to hold on to the good bits from 2020! Best regards Joakim
Kim Brown says
I couldn’t say it better myself. Happy New Year Joakim