Merry Christmas to all. I found something to do with all the murex shells I've been collecting.

I know that most of you are in the "shovelling" regions of the world, so we send our best wishes for picturesque and festive snow, rather than heavy, wet and treacherous snow. Down here, we get something called "the Christmas trades" meaning it just blows harder for a couple of weeks. In both places, travel plans are subject to change, and cancellation at the last minute. We're not going anywhere, so no problem.

But the forecast this morning is for light winds for the next couple of days, a few showers, mostly occurring at night, and a daytime temperature that we just don't need to worry about. Antigua Harbour Radio (06VHF) gives us the weather and announcements of local events, and we're looking forward to the champagne party in the Dockyard on Christmas Day. Starts around noon, see you there.

There are other holiday-type activities going on. Seems there's a bit of rivalry between some of the mega-yacht crews, and there's fun and games involved. Randy had to employ evasive manoeuvres in the dinghy to avoid being hit by water balloon missiles launched from a huge sling on the deck of "Leander." Just missed my head. Later that day, we watched a man dressed in red run across the deck of "Skat" and wrestle their inflatible Santa Clause from the forward rail and leap into the water with it. He was hotly pursued, but escaped to a tender waiting below which then zoomed off. There must be lots of this going on. Randy just got back from the chandlery (his daily trip) and reported that the huge "Alpha Nero" is sporting bright blue letters, 6 feet tall, on their starboard side that read "Alpha Zero - Skat 1."

I finally did some laundry, not very exciting. Just the usual, scrub in the bucket, wring, rinse, wring, hang on the lifelines. Place looks very disreputable for a few hours, but it dries quickly. Miss Mavis, ashore, did our sheets and towels, and the sheets come back IRONED. It's worth the $34EC per load just for the novelty of ironed sheets and pillowcases. Sorry that the laundry story isn't very exciting, but I do have another bra-buying tale! Went to town shopping with the folks from "Rasi" and "Lorriegray" and out at the Wood's Mall there's a store that sells a bit of everything, clothes mostly. Since I'd left three new bras hanging over the laundry tubs in my sister's basement in Toronto, I'm always on the lookout, and around here, the selection is pretty slim in my size range. So imagine my delight in finding a bright orange bra with green trim in my size! Once I found someone to retrieve it off the wall about seven feet up, I made my way to the fitting room. I'm just about to take my shirt off, and the young lad taps on the door and say, "Miss, Miss! You're not allowed to try it on!" I go back to the cash register. "Whaddaya mean I'm not allowed to try it on? How will I know if it fits?" The lady just sort of smirked at me and shrugged, so with my best look of incredulous irritation I tried to convey just how dopey she was and her stupid store too, dropped it on the counter and left. I know I don't look that dirty! I should have been tipped off by the sign in the dressing room that said "DO NOT TRY ON BLOUSES."

More holiday shenanigans, this time not so funny. Our neighbour in the anchorage runs a day charter business on his boat "Ivy" and the rest of the time he carouses. Night before last, at 4 am, we're both still awake after he'd zoomed under our bow with people in his dinghy a bit earlier. Randy gets up and is in the head, I'm lying awake and we hear him leap into his dinghy, fire up the motor, hit the throttle and zoom, BANG, he slams into Marjorie just off our stern and keeps on going. I hear Randy hollering obscenities, and we both dash on deck with flashlights, and sure enough he's hit the dinghy on the port quarter, and punched a good-sized hole. There was lots of water in the dinghy, and we couldn't decide whether it was leaking or not, so here we are, well before the crack of dawn, hoisting the dinghy on the davits. Buddy next door arrived back to his boat while this is going on, and didn't even slow down. We let him go, figuring there's no benefit trying to sort this out while he's drunk as a skunk.

The next morning, he's up around 7:30 to ferry two young women back to the dock, and on his way back, we wave him over. He waves, and keeps going. Nuh, uh. I wave again and yell for him to come over. He shakes his head, but finally drives over. He's still drunk. Doesn't quite remember hitting anything (I suggested DRINK might have had something to do with it, and he said, yeah, they do work on that), but given that his red bottom paint is all over the rail of my dinghy, he says he'll get his friend Ollie to come and look at fixing it for us. In the meantime, we've tried to get quotes for the repairs: the gunwhale is cracked off, separated from the stern, the top plank is broken about two feet from the stern, and the plank below it is plain gone, about two feet of it. The next plank is split about another two feet further along, the quarter knee has broken and the frame is broken. All the boat builders and woodworkers are flat-out busy, and haven't even got time to do a quote until after Christmas. We did find out that buddy's friend Ollie is an excellent boatbuilder, so if he comes through, we should be okay. Randy could do the work himself, except there's nowhere to do it but the foredeck, and no power tools. And I want the damned perp to take care of the repairs. He stopped by yesterday morning and was rather more polite and contrite, but we haven't seen Ollie yet. Stay tuned. I hope this isn't going to turn into a stupid saga. In the meantime, I can't row. The good news is that our neighbour has quit roaring around at high speed at night.

We're tidying up the rest of the boat for Christmas - I'm on for rubbing the salty marks off the hull, and polishing the chrome and brass this afternoon. It's the nautical equivalent of trimming the tree - we'll put up our "Merry Christmaz" flags on Monday. Everyone have a great Christmas - and don't drink and drive!

See below for recent photos.