Honolulu Star-Advertiser © Susan Scott
December 23, 1996
Last week, my partner and I decorated our sailboat with garlands of lights, invited 10 or so friends over, and prepared to sail harbor-to-harbor in the Christmas boat parade.
Prepared is the key word here: Christmas on a sailboat can be an adventure just tied up in a slip. But taking one out in a threatening Kona storm while carrying several hundred feet of electric lights and a load of people can be a downright dare.
Our first-ever boat Christmas occurred years ago on a friend’s sailboat. We were considering buying a boat but were confounded by the variety of sizes, styles and structures offered.
“Stay on my boat for a while,” one generous friend said when we groaned about so many choices. “Then you’ll know if it’s too big, too small or if you even like the nautical life.”
Oh, we were excited as we moved aboard that December. And oh, were we wet that Christmas. A Kona storm moved in like a banshee on Honolulu, drenching the city and its harbors in storm after storm. The aged boat was charming, but her overhead hatches leaked like sieves, as did her mast base and a couple of bulkheads in the clothes closets.
On Christmas, we sat below deck in foul-weather gear. Miserable? Not in the least. It’s a sailboat, my partner rationalized. You’re supposed to get wet. So we toasted our good fortune at spending our first Hawaii Christmas on a sailboat and then bought one of our own.
The rub was that the only boat we liked was in Connecticut. We had to sail it home.
That momentous journey landed us in Puerto Rico the next December. I’ll never forget anchoring after a long, hard passage, then hurrying ashore to look for Puerto Rican Christmas decorations for the new boat.
We couldn’t find any. No decorations lined the streets, and no holiday music drifted through the air. I knew Christmas existed inside private homes there, but this poor country couldn’t afford the public festooning that we Americans take for granted. It was a sobering realization.
Eventually, we found a pack of Christmas cards with Spanish greetings. These we addressed on the boat while listening to Christmas carols in Spanish on a local radio station.
We finally got the boat home and have since had many memorable Christmases aboard. One fond memory is of friends waking us on Christmas morning by tossing food gifts down the open hatch above our berth.
Another is the time I strung tropical fish lights in the cockpit. During the usual Kona Christmas storm, the system shorted out. Grabbing the stainless-steel bows of the cockpit that year was truly a shocking experience. The next year, those lights went inside.
We still string lights up the rigging though. For years, we struggled with those big old-fashioned bulbs that required a generator to run and a sorcerer to find replacements for.
Last year, stiff tradewinds accompanied the Christmas parade, banging those old, loosely strung lights against the mast and stays all the way home. The bulbs made popping sounds as they broke, and their glass confetti stuck to the nonskid for months.
This year, we bought little lights that do twinkling tricks and run off the boat’s own power. We bounced and swayed our way over to Honolulu Harbor without one broken bulb. During that time, the Kona storm dissipated, the air freshened and the seas flattened.
It was a perfect sailboat outing, the kind that makes us feel really happy about owning a boat. One friend, with wind in her face and a smile on her lips, said it all: “At this moment, I feel like I’m truly, vibrantly alive. It’s a wonderful feeling.”
Boats will do that. Merry Christmas.