Turn Back the Clock with a Christmas Yacht Charter

When’s the last time you really looked forward to Christmas – the way you did when you were young? For many of us, the festive season can become a bit of a chore as the years roll by, increasingly finding ourselves chained to the stove and cleaning out guest bedrooms, picking up after the kids and trying to find ways to entertain them inside on bitterly cold, windy days. Even for those of us who love ‘the silly season’ more than any other time of year, it probably feels like it’s time for something different.

This year, why not chase the sunshine with a Christmas yacht charter?

Just imagine it: glittering seas, waving palm trees, and utter relaxation.   This will be the Christmas the family remembers and talks about forever.

 A ‘Typical’ Christmas Yacht Charter in the British Virgin Islands

On the first night of your yacht charter in the BVIs, everyone gathers in the yacht’s sky-lounge, where the whole family puts up the tree together for the first time in years. Everything’s there, waiting for you: a fresh tree, beautiful decorations, and strings of lights that don’t need detangling and searching for that one inevitable broken bulb. Before long, the lounge of your charter yacht is transformed into a place of twinkling, soft light, carols are playing, and beautifully wrapped presents are piling up under the tree.

It’s now Christmas Eve and you’re anchored in Virgin Gorda, where the streets are alive with festive decorations and stalls, and the delicious smell of frying jerk chicken fills the air. You spend the afternoon snorkeling through the giant boulder pools at Virgin Gorda Baths and enjoying a luxury beach barbecue set up in a deserted cove. As night falls, you head into port to watch boats festooned in Christmas lights take part in the annual Holiday Boat Lights Parade.

After a fun, laughing meal at a restaurant where a reggae band plays and you embarrass the kids with your enthusiastic singing, you’re off to carols and midnight mass at one of the local churches which throws open its doors to visitors on this special night. In the wee dark hours of the morning you go back to your yacht smiling and exhausted, the tender trailing a swirling, sparkling path through a sea full of phosphorescence.

The Christmas Day you’ll talk about forever

It’s Christmas morning, and the whole family sleeps in late after the excitement of the night before. Finally rising from soft, warm beds, everyone meets out on deck, where foggy heads are cleared with leaps and dive bombs off the swim platform into the crystal clear sea. After a quick shower on the swim platform, you all pull on soft white bathrobes handed to you by the crew and head to the sky lounge to open presents. Happy chaos ensues, and you watch your family in satisfaction as you drink a coffee the stewardess brought you on a silver tray.

A short time later, the room looks like a bomb hit it. Reams of Christmas wrapping are strewn over couches and tables, ribbons hang from chairs and presents litter the floor. You ask everyone to take their haul back to their cabins and get dressed for breakfast. You come back to the sky-lounge a short time later and breathe a huge sigh of relief. It is spotless again; the stewardess have made everything perfect and are now ready to serve you breakfast at the table on deck, the centerpiece covered with Christmas decorations among the Caribbean flowers.

You sit down for a huge, decadent breakfast of pancakes and crispy bacon, smothered in maple syrup- knowing full well you shouldn’t, but doing it anyway. It’s Christmas! Around you, everyone’s feasting- waffles and eggs, fruit salads and fresh-baked muffins and croissants. You’re fairly sure you’ve died and gone to heaven. You look at the kids stuffing their faces and console yourself that they’ll be off getting some exercise soon. It’ s a perfect day in a tropical paradise- the water is dead calm and crystal clear- there’s a coral reef for snorkeling, and a long white sand beach under bending palm trees. They’ll run it off.

It’s now early afternoon: time for Christmas lunch. The table is groaning with food: roast meats, huge crab legs and lobster dripping in lemon butter sauce, big buckets of prawns on ice. Fresh salads and huge platters of crispy roast vegetables and Yorkshire puddings, sauce dishes brimming with rich gravy and glistening cranberry sauce. The champagne and mocktails flow throughout the meal and into the afternoon.

A Christmas free of obligation

You think about what you’d normally be doing on this day. Cooking. Washing up. Driving through empty streets back from the in-law’s house. Restless, noisy kids cooped up inside because it’s sleeting outside, finally going to their bedrooms to play video games, leaving the adults slightly relieved and sad at the same time.

Not this year. After lunch, you’re up on the sundeck soaking up the sun and resting full bellies. The adults are all in a state of blissed-out relaxation- reading on deckchairs, dozing off in the sun, or lazily flicking through magazines they never get a chance to read back home.

As for the kids? Well you can hear their happy screams as they hurtle down the yacht’s huge waterslide, and they jetski huge circles around the yacht, flicking up spray and laughing. You try to remember the last time the kids spent the whole of Xmas day outside playing. You can’t.

A Christmas sunset from the Jacuzzi

Later, the deckhands take everyone ashore to dig for wrapped Christmas puddings in the sand, and the crew dress up and lead the young at heart on a merry treasure hunt around the boat, finally finding the treasure suspended from a fishing rod hung off the back of the boat.

At sunset, it’s time for canapés and cocktails on the sundeck, watching the flaming Caribbean sun paint the sky red and gold.   Music plays and the yacht’s Jacuzzi is full of happy people, all legs and arms and bubbles. The stars come out, and the candles flicker all around.

At dinner, no-one can eat much, but they try- the chef has made a hotchpotch of everyone’s traditional favorites- huge pies made from leftover roast meat are the big hit, their pastry crispy and golden.  At the end, when everyone is stuffed fuller than they thought possible, it’s time for the Christmas pudding, the brandy lighting and flaming and served with lashings of cool custard or whipped cream. Your family is then introduced to the English tradition of Christmas crackers- all joining hands to pull apart cardboard cylinders wrapped in shiny paper and chasing the plastic trinkets and paper crowns that fall out, unravelling little pieces of paper and reading out the terrible jokes that only dads (and presumably the English) find funny.

As the day comes to an end, you all pile together on the soft lounges and thick carpet under blankets to watch Christmas movies you’ve seen a hundred times before, drinking eggnog the stewardess brings you along with hot chocolates and popcorn. It is all ritual- yet every now and then, you look out the window at the moonlight casting a silver shadow on the sea, and you realize that you’ve never before had a Christmas like this.

Ready to Charter? Contact Charter Specialist Natalia Clarke for the perfect getaway.

Natalia Clarke
Yacht Charter Specialist
+1 954.461.1763
Natalia@denisonyachtsales.com