{"id":20182,"date":"2024-01-04T10:48:27","date_gmt":"2024-01-04T10:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catamaran-outremer.com\/?p=20182"},"modified":"2024-05-16T14:29:30","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T14:29:30","slug":"sailing-across-the-atlantic-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catamaran-outremer.com\/en\/sailing-across-the-atlantic-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Outremer 51 “Tacocat” – Christmas celebrations under sail in the Atlantic"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Author : Colleen, Outremer 51 “Tacocat” owner<\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n

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\u2019Tis the season\u2026for sailing across the atlantic.<\/p>\n

Spares, check.
\nDitch bag, check.
\nRigging check, check.
\nPink squid lure for fishing, check.
\nOffshore medical kit for adults and child, check.
\nOffshore medical kit for dog, check.
\nBilge bin full of dog food, treats, and hygiene necessities, check.
\nBilge bin full of human treats for night watch of both salty and sweet persuasions, check.
\nExtra bags of that one dog treat because Callie\u2019s finicky and it\u2019s her favorite, check.
\nExtra bags of that one brand of tortilla chip because Trav is finicky and it\u2019s his favorite, check.
\nLessons, books, movies, and podcasts downloaded for offline use, check.
\nProvisions in every nook and cranny, check.
\nRecipes for all the fish we\u2019re going to catch, check.
\n<\/span>Other protein in the freezer in case my positive thinking isn\u2019t enough to reel anything in, check.
\nSprinkles for decorating Christmas cookies, check.
\nDecks of cards and board games, check.
\nLego Advent calendar (procured in September when an Amazon locker was available), check.
\nBottle of champagne and sparkling apple juice for arrival, check.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n

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The tiny table top tree is up in the salon, adorned with battery operated lights.\u00a0 Decorations are up (strategically placed so as not to hinder visibility), and we\u2019ve started the Christmas countdown with both Lego and chocolate calendars. The Christmas season has commenced en route to the Caribbean, providing some new tunes on the speaker and cookie baking- when the solar recharging conditions are just right to allow us to use the oven -to both pass the time and provide late night sugary snacks. While I love the holiday season, I\u2019m leaning on it especially hard this year as it gives me some extra items and projects in my bag of boredom-busting tricks on board.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div> \n<\/div>\n\n\n

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We\u2019ve ironed out some kinks of living on board with a child and dog over the past year and a half.\u00a0 But it\u2019s true that crossing an ocean with them ups the ante more than usual.\u00a0 Since we broke up the trip into multiple segments (Gibraltar-Canaries-Cabo Verde-Martinique) it all seems more manageable, but still, it\u2019s crossing an ocean(!), and the longest passage we have done as a family to date.\u00a0 We chose our Outremer 51<\/a> because it\u2019s fast and safe, so we feel great about the boat.\u00a0 I\u2019m somewhat prepared for the resistance to take care of homeschool in the morning because the dangling carrot of kid boats to hang out with is not there.\u00a0 I know the dog will still take care of her business on the front trampoline even if there\u2019s a fair amount of swell.\u00a0 I know we have all the food staples for humans and pets, and medical necessities should something arise when we\u2019re far offshore.\u00a0 But as the Chief Morale Officer on Tacocat, I\u2019ve always been equally interested in our thriving on board, not just surviving.<\/p>\n

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Thrive vs. survive looks like attempting to balance screen time with creative time offline.\u00a0 Cooking, writing, crafting, creating art, building with legos, building forts, and now we\u2019re adding in decorating cookies and gingerbread houses, cutting out snowflakes, and writing an end-of-year letter to send out to our extended family.\u00a0 It\u2019s moving our bodies like working out with TRX, doing yoga, boxing fenders, or an impromptu dance party.\u00a0 It\u2019s stimulating our brains with puzzles, games, podcasts, and reading\u2026oh so much reading. Admittedly, I know we have it easy with just one kiddo on board, that not only loves to read but is old enough to get lost in projects for long stretches of time independently.\u00a0 Yet, still for this passage I wanted to have a few tricks up my sleeve to keep things interesting for him- and thanks to the stores in Gibraltar that had both Christmas and Halloween treats on the shelves back in October we\u2019ve been having quite a festive time as we\u2019ve made our way West!<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n

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For Callie (the dog) thriving looks like walks on deck – on the leash of course- treat puzzles, sniffing for hours after the flying fish crash onto the deck and leave their smelly scales behind, chasing a ball up and down the hull, chewing on a new bone or her favorite stuffed squirrel toy, and keeping vigilant watch for birds.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div> \n<\/div>\n\n\n

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And somedays all we do is binge watch movies or just stare at length at the sea.\u00a0 We\u2019re sailors, not saints, after all.\u00a0 We lounge in the cockpit contemplating how weird it is to be on <\/em>the water for such a long time without being able to go in <\/em>it, track our friend\u2019s boats, marvel at the vast expanse of blue in all directions, wonder how we haven\u2019t seen any sea mammals or sea life at all and imagine a giant kraken on the sea floor has devoured everything.\u00a0 The \u201cprojects for passage\u201d don\u2019t get picked up, the days are both long yet go by in a flash. We rewrite the lyrics to Christmas songs when high on sugar and generally feeling a bit delirious from being cooped up together in a small area for such a long stretch of time.\u00a0 There\u2019s dog hair on the floor, the laundry isn\u2019t done, we\u2019re snippy from lack of sleep, but we\u2019re well fed, humming along to Jimmy Buffet\u2019s steel drum version of Jingle Bells and singing our version of \u201cThe 12 Days of Crossing\u201d, and consider ourselves closer to thriving and not just surviving as sail on to Martinique.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n

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Photos credits : @tacocatamaran<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Christmas season has commenced en route to the Caribbean, providing some new tunes on the speaker and cookie baking- when the solar recharging conditions are just right to allow us to use the oven -to both pass the time and provide late night sugary snacks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":20214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-owner-feedback"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catamaran-outremer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catamaran-outremer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catamaran-outremer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catamaran-outremer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catamaran-outremer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catamaran-outremer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catamaran-outremer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catamaran-outremer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catamaran-outremer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catamaran-outremer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}