Pirate’s Bay: Christmas, or Why Have an Accordion on a Yacht?

Pirate’s Bay: Christmas, or Why Have an Accordion on a Yacht? Pirate’s Bay—pirate-free for 200 years; how Swedish families live aboard a yacht. Cruiser get-togethers: it turns out Russians aren’t the only ones who like singing around a campfire to a guitar 🙂 . The bay by the town of Charlotteville and Pirate’s Bay are among the most beautiful in the entire Caribbean. You can anchor opposite the village or farther away, near a cosy beach. The beach looks secluded, but a path leads there along the shore from the village, so during the day you may meet more than just yacht crews there. By Christmas, there were around 10 yachts at the anchorage instead of the usual 2–3. The beach has a couple of makeshift “bars” selling beer and snacks, as well as a stream where you can fill up with water. On Christmas Eve, the yachts are twinkling with lights, three American crews who had also been anchored with us in Store Bay are animatedly making plans for an evening beer, and a fishing boat comes alongside: “I’m Dave. How are you doing? I can take you around the forest and waterfalls.” “Been there, done that,” we reply in unison. “And where are you folks from?” Dave, a fisherman from Charlotteville When Dave learned that we were from Russia, he said we were the first Russian cruisers he had ever seen and, overcome with emotion, invited us to his home for Christmas dinner. We sincerely thanked him for the invitation, but for some reason the surprise made us turn it down, as we had planned to celebrate Christmas with the cruising community. Dave did not insist, but I think both he and we were a little disappointed. Pelicans make a racket on the rocky outcrops from dawn, while a coral reef lies hidden beneath the water. Every morning we dutifully swim around it with our masks on, and then teleport to the beach, where the children from the yacht Anna Lisa are already waiting for our young sailors. The Crew of a Danish Writer from Sweden The 30-foot Anna Lisa stands out for her Swedish neatness and forethought. The small space inside the boat has been planned down to the last detail. Anna Lisa is so cosy and ergonomic that for almost a year now she has comfortably accommodated not only the captain, first mate and their two children, but also a couple of guests, of whom there is never any shortage aboard. Visiting the crew of the yacht Anna Lisa Thomas and Margarita met here in the Caribbean 16 years ago. They crossed the ocean on different yachts and met on the island of Saint Lucia. When Margarita called her mother to say that she had met the man of her dreams, her mother nearly had a heart attack. “Don’t worry, Mum, don’t worry—he’s from Denmark!” “Phew,” her mother exhaled: only a narrow strait in the Baltic Sea separated them from their future son-in-law. The crew of the yacht Anna Lisa Thomas Weber’s father and grandfather were sailors. In Sweden, every family has a yacht, he says. “Like every family back home has a six-hundred-square-metre allotment,” we think. The Weber family set off across the ocean for just one year: in September the children have to go back to school and the parents to work. Nine-year-old Truz and twelve-year-old Matilda study at home, doing their utmost not to fall behind their class so they can return without any trouble. The whole family speaks Swedish, Danish and English fluently. The parents also know at least Spanish. In Sweden, children start learning English in Year 1, immediately to a very high standard. “We’re a small country; we need to know other languages too,” says Thomas. When she was younger, Margarita lived and worked in America; she is a childcare teacher. Thomas’s main profession is in computers, but for a long time now he has also been writing and successfully publishing travel books. His son Truz proudly announces: “One of Dad’s books is called Shut Up and Travel.” At present, the captain’s cousin and her grown-up son are staying aboard Anna Lisa. Before them, there were other friends. And apparently they are all quite comfortable and not at all cramped on a 30-footer. All four young sailors quickly hit it off, while the adults happily visited one another until it was time for us to leave for Grenada, where our friend Lyonya—the captain of the yacht Laska—had already been waiting for us. He was the first Russian we had seen in four months and had also recently crossed the Atlantic. We celebrated New Year with him, but that is another story :). Cruiser Songs Around a Beach Bonfire When some friends of ours crossed the Atlantic with small children two years ago, they arrived straight away at a huge Caribbean marina—Rodney Bay in Saint Lucia—and were somewhat disappointed: “We dreamed that we’d sing songs around a campfire in a cosy bay with other cruisers like us, while our children played nearby.” As it turned out, to make a dream like that come true, you have to stay at small anchorages, well away from the “main road.” Then it can all happen like this: Waking up on Christmas morning, we found the yacht Abitbol beside us. She had arrived during the night, and her crew greeted us far too enthusiastically for strangers. Still not quite awake, it took us about an hour to realise that they were Aurora and Mike, with whom our captain had spent his evenings throwing daggers at targets in South America. A bit of the yacht Abitbol Without wasting any time, by lunchtime the Abitbol crew had made the rounds of the anchorage and invited the yachting community to the beach to light bonfires. That evening everyone made their way to the beach except, for some reason, the Americans. Not one of the four invited crews. Two crews from France, one from Denmark–Sweden, one from the Netherlands and one from Russia gathered onshore. Everyone brought food and drink, so we were warm and well fed. The bonfire smoked after the rains, oil lamps glowed invitingly, and the children gathered brushwood and stuffed themselves with sweets. The party organisers treated everyone to fish grilled over the coals, the Dutch made delicious tuna canapés, and the French baked two kilos of potatoes in foil. We brought drinks and a guitar; there was also popcorn, a flute and even an accordion :). Our young sailors and Matilda from the Swedish yacht Conversation flowed, and songs were sung in every language. Our ever-prepared Swedish friends had brought two sets of songbooks in English. Aurora could pick up any tune on the flute with virtuoso ease, while Michael taught a local girl who had appeared from somewhere how to play the accordion. Lada fell asleep right there on the beach. When we boarded the dinghy in the dark, Bouino, the Frenchman, pushed us through the high surf, thanks to which Nastya and I somehow even managed not to get our hair wet :), ending up only neck-deep in the water. The young sailors in the new mini-dinghy 🙂 Leaving for Grenada Lady Mary’s crew left Charlotteville with the warmest of memories and the hope of meeting kindred spirits again at the crossroads of the sea lanes. Being forced to live without a computer or the internet gave us the best days of the voyage: no messages, no news and not even any diary-writing! The children made up for the lack of communication by quickly making friends with other children and “going wild” in the surf (Lada’s neologism, derived from the verb “to run wild”). In Charlotteville we filled our fuel tanks to the brim (after Venezuela, it is the cheapest in the Caribbean), and replenished our water supply straight from the stream on the beach—we spent the entire day filling up, in four trips. We anchored the dinghy and carried full jerrycans from the shore through neck-deep water, taking on 700 litres this way. The bay in the rain Everyone had their fill of swimming with tropical fish, running around in the rain, singing songs and visiting friends, without opening a laptop once all week. This was where “the real Caribbean” finally happened to us. Side effects: not a single new post appeared on the blog, and messages from loved ones remained unanswered for a long time. We’re starting to make amends :). More photos The captain trudges back to the boat with water “What you see depends on where you look” 🙂 Picture 1. “What you see depends on where you look” 🙂 Picture 2 Fish delivered to your door Charlotteville fishermen The bay on a rainy day Marshal of the Nobility 🙂 Joy to everyone!