At the beach, the ocean was empty of people but full of waves and wind. Mast high swells pumped, and side-offshore wind blew the white of the waves into the air. I rigged and dressed in my 6mm wetsuit, booties, gloves and a hoodie. As I put my board in the water, I thought “this is not so bad, I am actually warm”. But once sailing, the cold rain pelted my face, and with the thick rubber gloves my hands could not grip the boom and my forearms swelled. Soon I lost my balance and found myself swimming in the cold, dark North Sea. “You’re not in Maui anymore!” The frigid water crept down my spine, and my body hunched in on itself, trying to survive the cold. “Relax, breathe, get back on the board and get past the waves” I told myself. Gusting to 40 knots with patches of wind around 5 knots, I needed all my energy just to sail straight. Ho’okipa has a channel where no waves break that we use to get to the outside. Cold Hawaii showed me no channel, just walls of white-water. I had yet to see a resemblance to my paradise home. Once on the outside, my arms were pumped up and exhausted as if I had just sailed for 3 hours without a harness. Breathe breathe breathe became pant pant pant. I gybed onto a massive wave, and I could not believe how foreign my gear felt. I rigged everything the same as the day before on Maui, but the weight and stiffness of the extra rubber made every action different. I spun out every time a gust hit, thrown sideways with no control in the cold. Valhalla