Christmas Island

1985 -- This is not exactly a country of its own, but a subsidiary island of Australia. It's a nice little place that is known for its tourism, especially for the crabs and marine life around there. We stayed at one of the anchorages there, though it was not exactly the safest we could be at, since it was rather open to the sea and there was a constant rolling swell.

We met some people there, made friendly. I don't remember if my parents knew them beforehand or not, but it seems likely. They had children, but were excessively strict; whenever we visited, the children were put to bed at 5pm on the dot, so my brother and I would have to entertain ourselves—with the other children complaining that we were not sleeping too. It seems excessive to make children go to bed at such an early hour, which I thought at the time too but for somewhat different reasons. I wanted to play with them and I did not want my parents getting equally idiotic ideas, considering the times that we went to sleep—whenever we felt like it. I now see why the locals that we met might have done so—children can be pests.

We ate some of the crabs—the famous Christmas Island crabs. Coconut crabs. Only locals were allowed to catch and consume them at the time, but being friendly with the locals gave us opportunity to taste some. It was illegal otherwise, because there was such a large market in trapping and selling them overseas. They're blue crabs with very large pincers and for some reason a delicacy. Crab is crab.

Christmas Island was one of the first instances of the ephemeral existence yachties can fall into—we parted ways with some people who were there, and leaving an expensive camera with them so that they could take photographs of the yacht as we were sailing. They took off to Cocos Keelings, in the South Indian Ocean, and we never saw them again.