I have just returned to the UK after a sailing holiday in the British Virgin Islands chartering a yacht to explore what for me were new seas.
The great thing about this sort of break is that it is such a complete change from regular working life that it is almost like being on a different planet. The weather (warm sunshine!), managing and piloting a sailing boat from place to place, experiencing the Caribbean with its different pace of life, mooring in different places every evening became our daily routine to the exclusion of everything else.
All of this gives perspective and a sense of refreshing renewal I have not always experienced on holiday. I did not look at my work emails and only checked my calls a few times and had no work crises, but it was more than this that made a couple of weeks seem like much longer.
Coming back, it’s like having recharged batteries and means being better prepared for the challenges the year holds on a personal, work and it would seem political front.
Some of it is about the sea – John F Kennedy said “We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch - we are going back from whence we came.”
And some of it is about the Caribbean. We met or heard about several people who had gone to visit the Caribbean and simply never left. They bought a house or better still a boat and created a new life running a restaurant or in one case making surfboards. We met a man and his wife sailing around the Caribbean for a couple of years as a part of their “bucket list” of things to do, but many make the change permanently.
There is a sort of laid back enterprising culture that underpins everything. We stopped over in Antigua and saw a local man with long dreadlocks (looking a bit like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean) offering to rub juice from an aloe vera plant he was carrying onto very red sunburnt looking tourists. A very sensible idea on a scorching hot day as aloe vera gel does relieve sunburn - its medical uses can be traced back 6,000 years to ancient Egypt.
He obviously asked for some payment as well for his services (which is fair enough) and as he went off along the beach after treating one particularly burnt woman he was saying, as he looked for his next customer, – “You burning – I earning”!
I recommend the climate, the culture and really just the whole experience of the Caribbean as a way of having fun and gaining new perspectives.
The great thing about this sort of break is that it is such a complete change from regular working life that it is almost like being on a different planet. The weather (warm sunshine!), managing and piloting a sailing boat from place to place, experiencing the Caribbean with its different pace of life, mooring in different places every evening became our daily routine to the exclusion of everything else.
All of this gives perspective and a sense of refreshing renewal I have not always experienced on holiday. I did not look at my work emails and only checked my calls a few times and had no work crises, but it was more than this that made a couple of weeks seem like much longer.
Coming back, it’s like having recharged batteries and means being better prepared for the challenges the year holds on a personal, work and it would seem political front.
Some of it is about the sea – John F Kennedy said “We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch - we are going back from whence we came.”
And some of it is about the Caribbean. We met or heard about several people who had gone to visit the Caribbean and simply never left. They bought a house or better still a boat and created a new life running a restaurant or in one case making surfboards. We met a man and his wife sailing around the Caribbean for a couple of years as a part of their “bucket list” of things to do, but many make the change permanently.
There is a sort of laid back enterprising culture that underpins everything. We stopped over in Antigua and saw a local man with long dreadlocks (looking a bit like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean) offering to rub juice from an aloe vera plant he was carrying onto very red sunburnt looking tourists. A very sensible idea on a scorching hot day as aloe vera gel does relieve sunburn - its medical uses can be traced back 6,000 years to ancient Egypt.
He obviously asked for some payment as well for his services (which is fair enough) and as he went off along the beach after treating one particularly burnt woman he was saying, as he looked for his next customer, – “You burning – I earning”!
I recommend the climate, the culture and really just the whole experience of the Caribbean as a way of having fun and gaining new perspectives.
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