The Joy of Christmas

Jumping for joy

I'm convinced the reason so many people read my blog, is because of all the nail biting horror stories I tell of my life at sea, which is basically just a catalogue of disasters, interspersed with brief moments of joy and "thank God I survived" tales.
The weeks leading up to this Christmas, and my family arriving were full of anticipation, prayers and hope for a Christmas without disasters, we haven't had one of those in so many years.  Christmas 2009 was possibly the worst, I actually cancelled Christmas it was all so horrific.

This year the weather had been truly dreadful for weeks, rain, rain and more rain, eventually becoming a monsoon before we left, I was in fear of a vacation spent locked below decks avoiding the downpour.

However,  as it turned out this year I have no horror stories, the weather cleared the day we set sail, and stayed beautiful for the entire time we were away, I even enjoyed the 10 hour sail from Colon to the islands.

Our closest disaster was a little too much sun, and Bob's discovery the day we arrived in the San Blas, that I had forgotten to provision for toilet paper,  we were down to our last 2 rolls, that near disaster was quickly averted by my discovery of three new rolls of kitchen paper ( happily we didn't need them).  We also ran short of beer and water but not until the last day, so that really doesn't count as a disaster.

The San Blas islands were incredibly beautiful as always, and our time there was spent happily doing fun family vacation stuff, snorkling, swimming, exploring the islands, and generally lazying around being boatie, beach bums.

Family Christmas in the San Blas

Beach walk

Every beach needs a hammock