Smells like Christmas

The weather is definitely not Christmas like. Even in Mexico the weather was significantly colder in winter (at least in the places we were at for Christmas time). Here there is no seasonal temperature change. A week ago there was a tree lighting ceremony in the “downtown” area. It was a community event and was interesting, but the tree was a palm tree! Not quite traditional or what I was expecting!  Things are a bit different here.

 

However to make is seem more like the holidays we have a Christmas tree. A real Christmas tree! We have not had a Christmas tree since around 2000 when we moved from our house onto the boat. It is nice to have the pine smell that always makes the house seem more like Christmas. It was nice to decorate the tree and make the place look festive. Of course we had to buy some new decorations, the space allotment in the boat for decorations was a large shoebox. Large enough for the boat, but too sparse for a tree and our rooms.

 

Tonight we are going to participate in the Christmas boat parade! The boat was decorated this morning and has more lights on it than it ever has before! It should be fun, we have some friends coming and we will do a few laps up and down the beach, and maybe all the way up to Ebeye (The closest Marshallese island). The last Christmas light parade we did was in Seattle, and it was really, really cold. This should be a bit more comfortable!  I will try and get some pictures to post later.

Naval battle

A few weeks ago the yacht club (that sounds much more pretentious than it is) decided to forgo the race for a naval battle. The battle was to be waged between the sailboats using water balloons (yes, eco-friendly bio-degradable balloons).  The original plan was to track hits to the hull and sails, and hits to crew to determine some type of winner.  The actual battle was a bit more chaotic and scoring was pretty much left behind. Unfortunately Jon and I were a bit late to the battle. Filling the balloons was slow, then we went out to the first marina rental boat, and realized that the boom/gooseneck was broken.  We decided to try another rental boat.  This one looked better till we looked inside. There was water over the floor! We bailed and had the marina staff bring out a pump. The pump was very small and slow.  We eventually had the water down to a reasonable level, and started to head out. Then we found that we had the small storm jib onboard made for high winds, which we did not have today. So we slowly sailed out to join the battle in progress.  By the time we got there the battle was mostly over. The other boats saw us and headed for us, not recognizing us in the rental boat they thought they would surprise whoever was sailing it with a few balloons.  What they did not realize was that we were better armed than they were, as we still had all our balloons and they were nearly out.  Once we closed upon each other the mistake was quickly realized as a lopsided battle occurred. The next several minutes were spent making passes at the other boats with balloons flying.  We noticed that some of the balloons were getting filled with salt water, and they noticed that some of our balloons had been stored in the ice chest with the ice and cold drinks.

The event was declared a big success and will certainly occur again. A lot of fun for everyone.