Cruising for Christmas

And share your holiday boating stories...

Story by Jennifer Silva Redmond

Author of Honeymoon at Sea: How I Found Myself Living on a Small Boat

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We were in Zihuatanejo on our 26-foot sailboat and Christmas was coming. We were happy to stay in the lovely anchorage to celebrate the holiday, the only impediment was that we had very little money; we were heading south to the Panama Canal after extending our honeymoon cruise of Baja and Mexico to well over a year—in short, we still had a couple of months before we could go back to earning.

So we had to figure out how to celebrate Christmas without breaking the bank—the piggy bank in this case. The first step was to get a Christmas tree. So we searched and searched along the beaches and eventually found a tree top that had been stripped and pummeled by the seawater and weather to a perfectly ghostly white and this ghost tree with its many branching branches we brought back to our boat.

We set the “ghost tree” up in the corner of our settee in our salon, with a red towel wound around its base. The ornaments were few so the main thing that set the mood was our popcorn garland—made with fishing line, of course. One we’d strung that around the tree it gave it more of a holiday decor aspect. I improvised some tinsel by unwrapping the wrappers from a big package of chewing gum and then taking each one of the small silvery gum wrappers and wrapping it around the tip of a branch. By the time I finished it sort of looked like a Christmas tree, and we were both sick of gum.

Christmas dinner solved itself when we saw that the local yacht club—and I used the term loosely—was inviting all of the cruisers from the anchorage to come in and celebrate with a cruiser's potluck. I still have lots of rice and beans in the pantry under the settee—and of course spices, sauces, and herbs were easy to find and inexpensive so I decided to cook up a big pot of long-grained rice with a spicy tomato sauce, onions and herbs, some dried chorizo I had on hand, and a small amount of locally caught shrimp which I hoped would make it taste almost like paella.

The big day dawned bright and sunny with a blue sky that reminded us of Christmas back home in San Diego. We spent the morning walking on the beach with our dog Charlie and then went back to the boat to dress—luckily the local launderer was coin-operated and cheap so at least we had clean clothes—and soon it was time to go over to the potluck. I brought a big stew pot full of my improvised pallea with our boat name written on an attached card, and, since it was BYOB, we brought a bottle of red Baja wine.

Everyone had gathered in a big open patio with wooden tables set up down the center. The table was covered with all kinds of pots, pans, bowls and platters full of entrees, side dishes, salads, and desserts. We had a glass of wine and then took our paper plates over to help ourselves. At one point we both were in front of a casserole dish with no boat name attached; the aroma was a bit gamy, but the dish was steaming hot so we each took a scoop of it.

Sitting on bench under palm trees, we took big hungry bites as we chatted with new cruising friends. Then, as luck would have it, we both took a bite of the mystery casserole at the same time. A stew made of gym socks and road kill would have tasted better than what was in our mouths. What ensued was exactly what always ensues when you have taken a big bite of something that tastes terrible—we quickly deposited the mess into a napkin and then tossed it out, along with the largely empty paper plates. We laughed about it to ourselves and then went to get bowls of ice cream and cake for dessert.

Back at the dinghy we both were saying what a great time we’d had, with the exception of that one horrible dish. Wondering what it was that was so disgusting, we made up all sorts of ideas of curdled cat casserole and rancid possum stew and all sorts of disgusting names. We cracked ourselves up because our bar for humor is pretty low once we’ve split a bottle of wine, and off we went to bed.

Months later, down in one of the stunning white-sand beaches of Huatulco, as we relaxed in the calm beautiful anchorage, waiting for a good weather window to start crossing the dreaded Gulf of Tehuantepec, we gathered again with fellow cruisers for a pot luck. We were standing around a table with many less offerings on it when I spotted a dish that looked like the mystery casserole. I whispered a warning to Russel which was clearly overheard by another cruiser who stepped back to stare at us, shaking his head.

“So, you two were at the Christmas potluck in Zihuat, too?” he asked us, “What in the world was that stuff?” •SCA•

Readers: Tell us your own holiday boating stories or about your holiday boat-related traditions. Share in the comments below or send your thoughts to us at josh@smallcraftadvisor.com