We were supposed to be in the Bahamas by now, surrounded by new friends, balmy temps, clear water and fresh lobster.

Instead, we’re alone at this marina, still working on boat projects, with no end in sight. It’s a weird Christmas. Let’s break it down…

We always knew we had way more projects than time. Unfortunately, projects take MORE time than you’d expect, not less. So when the 15th rolled around (our informal cut-off date), I tried not to freak out. I looked at a calendar, did some math, and realized our plan was flawed from the start.

Even if we left on the 15th, it would probably take around 5 days to get to our next boatyard to get hauled out for bottom paint. That would have us arriving at a boatyard just as they shut down for the holidays. Instead of getting upset, I’m trying to look at this as bonus time!

On the flip side, since we’re here during holiday shutdown, we can’t order parts or get anything welded or talk to any experts. They’re all busy sipping eggnog and eating Christmas ham. Lucky ducks.

One of the key things holding us back is that one of us needs to go up the mast. In order to get someone up the mast we need to use a winch to hoist them. When we were putting the genoa back on this fall, that winch got really tight and something was rattling around inside, so we pulled the winch apart last week. One of the plates had an indent as a locating pin / lock mechanism, and the indent had sheared off. We found that out last Monday. Kyle searched for a replacement plate for several days but it’s not sold with any kits, and the manufacturer is in Denmark, so if they have this part available shipping will still be very slow.

But wait! We have another identical winch, we’ll just take the plate from that one! Nope, that one was in almost the same condition.

Kyle says “No big deal, I’ll just call the welder on Monday and see if he can fix it!” to which I replied “Oh, you mean on Christmas Eve…?”

So we’re stuck in a holding pattern until the holiday is over.

Since we’re so far behind, we talked about postponing the haulout until we reach warmer waters. However, our insurance company is absolutely shocked, shocked! that we’re heading to the Bahamas, our policy doesn’t cover that! So they’ve been shopping around for a new policy for us, great, no big deal…except a new insurer needs a new survey. We need the boat hauled out for a survey. There’s no way to postpone a haulout.

Hopefully we make it there by February.

Honestly, I’m not upset about spending Christmas alone, or spending Christmas working on boat projects. The only thing that’s getting to me is not knowing – right now it feels like we will never leave this place. Marina California. Do we ever make it out?

We’re spending Christmas Day by smoking pretty much everything in our fridge (and some things that aren’t!), and watching Christmas classics like Die Hard, Iron Man 3, and Jurassic World (which is briefly shown to be a Christmas movie in one of the opening scenes when they’re at the airport and you can clearly hear Christmas music).

Kyle’s fam went to their cabin for Christmas so it’s just us and the marina cat hanging out here. MacMac normally hangs out in the store all day, and without his normal social group, he’s a little more affectionate. He has traipsed all over our boat despite my vehement protests because I’m very allergic to him.

He also meowed at us the whole time we were out in the dinghy. I know what you’re thinking, “how loud is that cat if you can hear him over a dinghy motor?” Ha. Well. About that…

So far the dinghy runs for about ten minutes then dies. Hopefully it’s just bad gas, we’ll have to pick up some fresh gas when it’s not Christmas Day. The carbs have been cleaned and it has new spark plugs, but the other potential explanation is that it’s overheating. We’ll see.

One last funny story, because why not. After our dinghy adventure, Kyle worked on the hard top and we had this conversation:

“Would you like me to put the dinghy back behind the transom, just so it can catch anything that you might drop?”
“What? No! I don’t drop things in the water! …I just cursed myself, didn’t I!?”
“Just don’t drop anything expensive.”

I swear, not 30 seconds later, I hear a weird noise. I head back to investigate…

“No don’t look!”

And there’s Kyle, using a deck brush to fish something out of the water. What did he drop? A fricken Sharpie.

At least it wasn’t something expensive.