Yacht Kids and the African Heat

The African Heat It came, descended upon us and knocked the wind out of us—that very African heat. At eight in the evening, a thermometer in town read +45°C. The air dries you out more fiercely than a hairdryer; humidity is 16%. Compared with 78% at sea. The day before we left, I spent the whole day preparing the boat for a lonely, unattended summer. I washed and dried the cupboards in the kitchen (sorry, the galley), transferred grains and all the food into secure containers, and packed our things. Everything had to be crammed in so that we could fly without checked baggage. We had few belongings, but an enormous thirst for knowledge: Nastya’s textbooks and exercise books filled one and a half backpacks. In the photo: 39.7°C inside the yacht. 16—relative humidity as a percentage Nastya is catching up on her intensive maths course and other subjects from morning till night, despite the fact that, for the first time in the past seven months, there are two boats packed with children moored next to us. The Yacht Kids of Agadir Gilles, a Frenchman who speaks little English, was so eager for our children to play with his son and the kids next door that he even knocked on the hull and announced once again: “I have a son, he’s 12. The neighbours have a daughter, she’s 12. Together!” Andrey said that our crew was preparing to leave. But that evening we relented and sent the children off to be “together” one last time. The bright-yellow yacht next to Gilles’s is home to a large French family with three children: Charlotte is 12, and the boys are 9 and 6. For the past six years, they have lived and travelled aboard their yacht. About a month and a half ago, they left the Mediterranean and are now heading to the Canary Islands via Morocco . Later, we would become quite close and even sail together aboard our yacht . The children do not remember any other kind of life. They study with their mother and play with one another and with Matthew, the son of that very same Gilles. Games The whole evening before we set off inland, the international band of children played hide-and-seek. Without any language barriers whatsoever. Nastya noted with surprise that the boys thought nothing of climbing into, for example, a large rubbish bin to hide and sitting there with the lid closed. And I wonder: is that because they are boys? Or is a childhood aboard a yacht simply free of prejudices? Charlotte is the only one of the children who speaks English (incidentally, from what we’ve observed, the French generally aren’t very keen on communicating in English). Charlotte confided that they had wanted to meet Nastya for a long time but had been too shy. She also said Nastya was the first girl from a yacht she had ever seen. Before that, they had only come across boys. The girls, Nastya and Charlotte, visited each other’s boats and exchanged email addresses. Now they will write to one another and hope to meet again in the Canary Islands in September. P.S. And yes, I don’t understand why we have no photographs of them... The heat made us forget all about the camera.