How to combine Halloween with the birthday of the most important crew member
Two weeks have flashed by since Andrey’s birthday. In that time, we managed to fall ill, send the first chapter of the book to the publisher, recover, finally undergo the medical examination required for our visa extension due to COVID, appear as experts at an international boat show, move the yacht to a new location... plus a whole heap of everyday chores.
Following the fine old tradition of Roma weddings, we wanted to celebrate the captain’s day all week. But on the third day, the young sailor and I came down with a case of too much partying, and the boisterous fun drained away into a murky bottle of castor oil.
I’d rather tell you about this year’s captain’s birthday, which falls precisely on Halloween for a reason.
The Halloween Witch
Here and There
Back home, the existence of All Hallows’ Eve doesn’t particularly interest us, but abroad the young sailor takes a keen interest in it. How could you miss dressing up as a frightfully beautiful witch and collecting sweets around the neighbourhood?
Two years ago
in Tahiti,
Ladunya was taken along to pillage the town by her friends from the round-the-world yacht Blagovestie. There, they shouted something in French at the kindly townsfolk that translated roughly as “Sweets or your life!” and stuffed their little bags with sugary ransom.
In
South Africa,
Halloween slipped past us like an invisible ghost, and instead of sweets we ate watermelon while visiting the guys...
This year, my task was to put together a grown-up celebration for the captain’s birthday while knocking the under-twelves’ evil spirits senseless with a Halloween quest.
.
A Spider Has Eight Eyes
And so, on Halloween morning—which was also Andryukha’s birthday—I found myself drawing a gigantic eight-eyed spider, while the birthday boy was pressed into service carving open a pumpkin. After buying sausages and printing out the quest clues at our friends’ place, I mounted my trusty white steed Rocinante (thanks to our friends the Lugovskys for leasing it to us) and systematically combed the surrounding blocks in search of houses dressed up as Dracula’s castle. After all, those are the only houses young zombies are supposed to visit for sweets.
.
That very spider and pumpkin :), plus a watermelon with a funny face
.
Quest and Grill
Nastya and I were still stashing the last envelopes of the terrifying quest around the yacht club when the first guests were already getting bored beside a pot of Olivier salad. The second and all subsequent guests were luckier: the Olivier was joined by sausages, treats, other guests, and the hosts :). Once the children had eaten, put on their make-up, and gathered into one puzzled little huddle, the spider and I sent them off to crack ciphers and search for spider eyes all over the neighbourhood, while I blissfully shoved the first piece of sausage into my mouth.
Fortunately, the adult birthday guests took some of the fire upon themselves: Zhenya grilled the meat, Igor was in charge of topping up the wine, and through everyone’s combined efforts the table groaned under the weight of food. The conversation was pleasant, and the jokes were good.
I’m making a toast—that’s why I look so funny
True, while rushing between the children’s quest and making toasts for the adults, the birthday boy’s wife forgot two things:
to bring the guitar from the yacht, so we could add another special-interest group,
and to take a group photo.
The programme also included a tour for everyone who had never been aboard a round-the-world yacht. I trumpeted the announcement at the guests through a megaphone made from my cupped hands. “Yacht tour! Step right up, ladies and gentlemen; a discount for the first ten ticket holders!” I called, in the style of Sochi tour guides and corn vendors on Riviera Beach, urging everyone to line up in pairs.
Nastya led the procession off to the yacht, while we hoisted the micro-sized birthday cake onto the table (sweets ruin your figure :)).
Thank You, Friends
For the warmth of your company, the hilarious jokes, and the wonderful gifts! There were handmade gifts featuring original photographs of our yacht club at sunset; touching drawings and cards; monetary contributions towards a surfboard, an e-reader, and a wetsuit; and all sorts of treats for the festive table. The most surprising gift—and the one that delighted me personally—came from Maxim Zakharov in the form of flowers for the birthday boy’s wife. Max knows that the secret to a husband’s happiness is a happy wife.
Here I haven’t finished chewing and am hiding my food-stuffed mouth behind a smiling mask )
But in fact, the party at the yacht club wasn’t the end of it—it was only the beginning.
Those who owned children were invited to form a motorcade and teleport the fledgling vampires to the sweet-distribution point. And let me tell you, it was great fun, educational, and somehow... just like in the movies.
Using the express method, the children raced around about six houses decorated for Halloween. In addition to the three I’d spotted during the day, we found some extra houses down a little lane with a dirt road. The village-resort street welcomed both dark and light forces with live music and an art gallery, from which Yulia and I, the chief connoisseurs of art, were eventually dragged away with some difficulty.
A map of Australia in that very art gallery
Prichal Club
And we still had another visit ahead of us: to the Prichal Russian Music and Art Club for its 50th concert.
Andrey was wished a happy birthday, and the evening ceased to be languid... The organisers asked whether we wanted to sing something on stage. We reasoned that our repertoire contained no English-language song—and that was the evening’s theme—that we could sing on the spur of the moment. So we sensibly declined. The concert came to an end, and the lights came on in the hall. And th... the devil—the very one who had apparently been quietly gathering strength since the start of the Halloween rituals—tugged us by that very place where one usually goes looking for trouble.
“I’ll sing now!” howled a treacherous voice from the depths of a Halloween-befogged soul. And for some reason we crawled onto the stage. The song was about a holiday. It has only three lines of lyrics, which in our panic refused to stay in the singers’ memories. But that performance will remain forever in the memories of the audience, pinned to their seats by our discordant chorus. With the hall lights on, we had an excellent opportunity to study their eyes, full of anguish. “Haven’t sung for ages, and then sang *that,” the performers and listeners concluded in unison, before wandering off to share their impressions with their fellow sufferers.
That very ill-fated moment
It was a big fat full stop at the end of the kaleidoscope that was 31 October—I’d even call it the lid on Halloween’s coffin :).
Afterwards, our kind friends agreed to drive the birthday boy around Perth so that he could bellow drunken songs through the open windows, while the rest of us walked along the waterfront with him. Everyone froze, and the little witch got tired of flying on her broomstick. We decided that next time we’d go for a walk before midnight.
1 November—A Red-Letter Day
The rain came bucketing down, and I barricaded myself inside the yacht to write an article about our expedition in English, sending the family off to buy presents for the birthday boy. My writerly solitude was interrupted by a bloodied leg thrust through the fireship hatch by our good friend Yulia Galushina.
That scene from a horror film opened the second act of the Ballet de la Merlaison (read: the captain’s birthday), in which Yulia and I made mulled wine, Mila and Lada played games of chance among the wine bottles (as children from troubled families are supposed to do )), while Andrey and Seryozha bawled improvised lyrics to Tsoi’s songs. The latter had us laughing so hard that we could barely draw another breath.
All in all, there was plenty to give us the sniffles the next morning. We spent the whole week recovering, then headed back into battle at the weekend.
Lada had a concert with the decorated song-and-dance ensemble of the Mosaica Russian School. The next day, she had a children’s disco organised by that same Russian school, the most exuberant in the world, Mosaica. Meanwhile, the captain and I appeared at a brilliant event—the Virtual Boat Show (a yacht exhibition and review, new products, trends, masterclasses, interviews with big names in the yachting world, and other goodies).
We appeared in English on Saturday and in Russian on Sunday.
Virtual Boat Show:
www.virtual-boat-show.com
To enter the platform and listen to the interview: —
www.virtualboatshow.vfairs.com
And meanwhile, another week slipped by...
Energy to you all!
Other Halloween and captain’s birthday celebrations during our circumnavigation:
2016 and 2017 —
in Colombia, and the year before that—Halloween in the Amazon jungle, French Guiana
2019 —
in South Africa
Our ghosts are out carolling