Thanksgiving looked a lot different this year. Paul and I had originally planned to maybe go to a restaurant, but our sail plans to Saint Martin were delayed by bad weather. We waited in Guadeloupe until Thursday morning, and then set sail for a 24 hour trip to Simpson Bay.
But this meant that Paul, Craig and I would be at sea for thanksgiving! This didn’t make a big deal to Craig, who hadn’t really known about Thanksgiving anyway. But Paul and I decided to make a small feast for our little crew to mark our first holiday aboard the boat.
The night before, while entertaining our Brazilian boat neighbor on the boat, I peeled a half sack of potatoes and Paul chopped them and boiled them. After that I mashed them with a fork into “puree”, as our neighbor put it, and seasoned with butter, salt and pepper. This ensured that if we had big swells on the sea on Thanksgiving, we could still have mashed potatoes. I also cut up a bag of white bread for the base of a stuffing that I had never made before- but because we had done all our shopping on an island, we had to make due with what we had.
The following morning, the day of Thanksgiving, I chopped onions, made broth, cut up sausage and prepared a large pyrex of stuffing to go into the oven at some point. Paul prepared the pork shoulder-we jokingly called it traditional, because not a lot of island countries sell or eat turkeys, and put it into the oven for a planned four hour cook. With our limited galley space, we had to plan burner and oven use as far ahead as possible. We also do not have a microwave, so if you want something hot it must be from the stove or the oven.
Around that time I spent a good ten minutes scrubbing our one and only baking sheet on the back deck to get off some pizza dough and cheese from the night before. Unfortunately, when I was attempting to rinse our baking sheet, it slipped into the water and sank to the bottom. As we were planning to leave at noon and it was already noon, we spent the next twenty minutes freediving the 30 or so feet and looking for it, but with the current and the swing of the boat, we didn’t find it. Our baking sheet was officially out of commission, on this our day of turkey. Our first pivot.
Fortunately we have learned to adapt quickly by living on a boat in the Caribbean, so we made do with what we had- which was canned food, a lot of fresh rosemary, and an oven that gets really really hot. Like super nova hot. After 4 hours of cooking the pork shoulder, Paul pulled out of the oven something that looked like a chocolate cake, but was actually a terribly blackened pork shoulder. We set it aside to rest. Pivot two.
I cooked green beans from a can on the stovetop, and melted butter and garlic to reheat the mashed potatoes. The super nova oven baked my dish of stuffing in about forty minutes, and we dished the plates with all our feast. Also, there was gnocchi, for the vegetarians.
Around this time, we we were experiencing one of those lovely bright red sunsets that the Caribbean provides. We were past Guadeloupe, but south of Montserrat still, so the sun dropped burning red directly into the ocean. We toasted the crew of the TIntas and enjoyed our makeshift meal together, two Californians and a South African Londoner. The food was miraculously delicious.
I sat the watch after dinner, the 9 to midnight watch and was reading a book with magic in it while digesting a huge meal. I walked around the boat to check our lines and tail tells, but suddenly realized that our boat wake was creating bioluminescense. We were trailing green glitter behind us as passed through the water silently, the rest of the world dark. Craig and Paul were sleeping inside, preparing for their shift, so I sat quietly watching and feeling very grateful for this, the small feast we cooked, the adventure we chose, and the company we keep.
Happy Thanksgiving to our friends and family,
Love
Paul and lindsay
PS RIP to our baking sheet. Forever sleeping with the fishes.
TIBURON MARINO 