We moved aboard the weekend after Thanksgiving in 2024, giving Thanksgiving 2025 the special position of being our last first holiday aboard. Thanksgiving is usually a big deal in our family, with lots of associated traditions. As I am the self-designated “fun engineer” on our boat, I spent months preparing to make it special for our kids. I even had two packages of raspberry jello that I had socked away all the way back in Florida to make our traditional “Mammaw’s famous pink jello.”

Even though I had done as much planning as possible, some things are just more difficult in the Caribbean. I couldn’t find sour cream anywhere for a full month beforehand, even in the bigger Grenadian supermarkets. (Another ingredient in Mammaw’s famous jello…very 50s but delicious!) The sweet potatoes I had bought in Grenada rotted stealth style, meaning I had no idea they were rotting until I tried cutting into one. I realized an hour before dinner that the “precooked” turkey breast I thought I had purchased was actually not cooked at all, which led to a mad scramble trying to find a pan it would fit in. (I ended up having to relocate the pumpkin cake to use that pan.) I then realized it wouldn’t fit in the oven with anything else, which would make side dishes and rolls difficult. Instant pot to the rescue!

Another part of my job as the fun engineer is to make sure we’re in a good spot for days that are special. Nobody wants to spend their birthday on an overnight passage, and holidays need friend boats. We teamed up with our friends on Alliance (who we met way back in North Carolina) and made a trip to the beautiful Tobago Cays in the Grenadines, in between St. Vincent and Grenada. We spent several days anchored on gorgeous horseshoe reef, swimming with turtles and generally enjoying the crystal clear waters. We even got to snorkel with a spotted eagle ray! Unfortunately our only underwater capable camera is a very old go-pro, so we never get good pics of our underwater adventures. Hopefully we will remedy that in the future!

The Tobago Cays weren’t all fun and games. It was extremely choppy in the anchorage for the entire time we were there. This was the most evident in the jello, which solidified at an angle from all the rocking in the fridge! We also swamped the dinghy for the first time following a series of rookie mistakes combined with big surf, and ended up having to pull it up onto the beach and bail it out with hands and flippers.

We didn’t do much swimming off the boat during our time in Grenada since it was deep and the water was murky. It has been fun watching the kids be little fish now that we’re in clearer water again! Ian and Rowan’s progressions have been especially dramatic, as neither of them were confident swimmers when we moved aboard. Rowan now enjoys free diving and I just love seeing his joy as he scoops up pretty shells or handfuls of sand to show me. I often still can’t believe that this is our life! Someday we are going to really miss the ability to snorkel right off our “back porch.”

Next up for the Zia crew: continuing north. We had to skip Bequia on our way down and are excited to spend some time there. Then hopefully Martinique for Christmas!