Christmas and New Year sailing charter food plan

Christmas and New Year weeks are the first to sell out in the Caribbean charter season, so groups are booking boats now. The food is the part nobody plans until the last minute, and on a holiday week aboard, that is exactly when shops close. Here is how to plan a festive week in a galley with two burners.

Plan the week around two big nights

A holiday charter week has two meals that matter more than the rest: Christmas dinner (or Christmas Eve, depending on your crew) and New Year’s Eve. Decide early which one is cooked aboard and which one is ashore. Popular anchorages and beach restaurants book up fast for both nights, so if you want a table, reserve it when you book the boat. Everything else in the week can stay simple: breakfast and lunch aboard, a mix of easy dinners and evenings ashore.

A festive dinner that fits a boat galley

A roast turkey is not happening in a charter oven, if the boat even has one. Swap the big roast for dishes that work on two burners or a barbecue on the stern rail:

• •Main: grilled fish or prawns, a whole pork tenderloin, or a slow-cooked one-pot stew made in the morning while the boat is at anchor.
• •Sides: a big rice or couscous dish, roasted or grilled vegetables, a salad dressed at the last minute.
• •Starter: no-cook is best — smoked salmon, cured meats, cheese, crackers, fresh fruit.
• •Dessert: bring it ready-made — a Christmas pudding, a panettone or a stollen survives a week in a locker, and so do mince pies in a tin.
• •Pack a small “festive box” from home: crackers, paper hats, candles in jars, a string of battery fairy lights. They weigh nothing and change the mood of the cockpit.

Provision around holiday closures

On many islands, supermarkets and markets close or shorten their hours on 25 December and 1 January, and sometimes on the days around them. Assume you cannot buy anything on those two days:

1. Do the big shop on embarkation day, with the festive dinner already on the list, not as a later top-up.
2. Check opening hours at your base and at the islands on your route before you leave; ask the charter company, they know.
3. Buy fresh fish and bread the day before the big night, not the day itself.
4. Many charter companies offer a pre-ordered provisioning service delivered to the boat. In holiday weeks, order it early and add the festive items explicitly.

Drinks, ice and the midnight toast

• •Water first: in tropical sailing grounds, plan generously and stow bottles low as ballast.
• •Ice is the real limit in a small fridge on a warm week. Know where to buy it along the route and keep one cool box for drinks only, so the food fridge is not opened every ten minutes.
• •Bubbly for midnight: count one bottle per two or three adults for the toast, kept in the coldest spot, plus alcohol-free fizz for children and skippers.
• •Fireworks at popular anchorages draw crowds of boats on New Year’s Eve: anchor early and plan a no-cook dinner so nobody is cooking at sunset.

Share the cooking and the bill

Holiday weeks often mix families and friends who do not cook together every day. Give each cabin one dinner to own, let the festive dinner be a group effort with a clear plan of who does what, and decide how to split the costs before the first shop: equally per adult, with children at a reduced share, or by cabin. Settling a festive grocery bill after a week of sun is much easier when the rule was agreed on day one.