Mele Kalikimaka

The title is Hawaiian for "Merry Christmas." This year I was not able to make it home. I have been more-or-less traveling for the past six months and I really wanted some time to get settled in Hawaii and just stay still. I envisioned my holidays full of sleeping in and lounging all day. In the end, that didn't happen, but I had a better time than I would have had I been lazy.

My Christmas ended up being very nice, thanks to friends, old and new. A good friend/teammate of my from college was in town, so we were able to catch up the past week. He helped me try to dredge up my mast from the murky marina floor. In the end, we weren't able to raise the mast from the bottom of the marina, but I plan on renting some SCUBA gear this weekend. We'll see what happens.

Although Madeline & Nine is without a mast, she was still able to make it to the sand bar. I'm not sure if I already mentioned it or not, but the 1/8" metal lines holding the mast on frayed and snapped during the 75 mph + Kona Winds a few weeks ago. To be fair, I did notice that they were starting to get small cracks a while back, but I didn't want to spend the $800 to replace them. Nothing on sailboats is cheap, but I am cheap. That combination is how we got to where we are today. I would like to say "lesson learned," but change is slow and I will probably still be looking to cut costs where I can.

On Christmas day I went to the sandbar with Dan, a new co-worker Mandie, and her sister who was visiting from school. It was a pretty good time. We had some celebratory Christmas cigars (note the celebration in the photo below) and ate brats. Very Christmas-y. It was in the low 70's, so pretty chilly, buy we all managed.

On Christmas I had dinner at a friends place. We wore crowns and had some amazing prime rib. All in all, a good time. Tomorrow I leave for the island of Kauai, so I should have another update soon.

Happy New Year!