We had quite an emergency last night. I was suffering from severe laser burns, Isabelle arm was chopped off and Yannick was decapitated. All due to serious fighting! With pirates? No, worse! Darth Vader had invaded SeaWalk. Fortunately Doctor Katie cured everybody, including Yannick. We still wonder whether he missed his head or not J .

What happened? It was just Sinterklaas eve (Sinterklaas Avond) and we had a real good evening. Amazingly Sinterklaas located SeaWalk in mid ocean. He must have talked to the ARC people because I´m fairly sure a 700 year old guy will never learn Windows of surf the net. Or perhaps he’s using a Mac…

After a real nice diner, Boerenkool met spek en draadjesvlees (sorry, this is impossible to translate properly so I won’t bother) we were singing traditional Sinterklaas songs. In the afternoon Isabelle backed special Sinterklaas cookies  called Pepernoten. They are round cookies, ½ inch in diameter and spiced with a special mix of Indonesian herbs which my Mum send us by mail couple of months ago.

And suddenly someone knocked hard on our door and a black gloved hand threw Pepernoten into the main cabin. The faces on the kids were absolutely fantastic! They couldn’t grab the notion that it was Zwarte Piet (Sinterklaas’ Moorish helpers) and Sinterklaas. After giving our Belgium ¨Zwarte Piet¨ who was pretending to be sleeping in front, the chance to climb back through the fore hatch we took the kids outside. And then they saw the presents and nothing but the presents. Finally they realized that Sinterklaas had indeed not forgotten them and he had delivered those presents. Needless to say they were elated. Again those beautiful faces!

Soon they were ripping the giftwraps. Alec got a Jedi and Darth Vader suit with matching laser sabers. I’m sure he ´ll make good use of them once we are on the pontoons again and start duelling. ARC yachts be aware where you park your yachts in St Lucia.

Katie got a Doctor´s set including a real cute doctors outfit. She really loved that since she always want to be the Ship’s Doctor. And now she can. She looks absolutely adorable in her outfit.

And it was none to soon she got her doctor’s outfit since the Skipper, First Mate and Second Mate were seriously injured by Darth Vader’s surprise attacks.

It was a good day.