Saturday, 20 October 2018 - I went to the Florida Keys Marathon International Airport 75th anniversary celebration today with Bev and Mike from the S/V Queequeg today. The airport opened as an auxiliary airfield for the Naval Air Station in Key West in 1943, but was decommissioned as a military facility after WWII. I flew out of this airport about 45 years ago on a commercially scheduled flight after sailing with my folks, but now there are no scheduled flights into or out of here, although they are considering reestablishing service. Now, all flights are private or charter.
                    Since the airport opened in the '40s, most of the planes displayed at the celebration are from that era. They included a Stearman, Waco, Cub, Beech, Seebee, Ryan, Cessna, Mallard, Kodiak, and more.

Sunday, 21 October - We had a slightly larger kayaking group this morning to explore the channels in the Boot Key mangroves. One of the guys brought a map showing channels that we hadn't known about previously, so looked for those. I say "we looked for those," but everybody else seemed to be satisfied with me doing the searching and bushwhacking and them following along. These trails didn't get much traffic last year because of hurricane Irma keeping tourists away and keeping the locals, myself included, from having spare time to explore, so some have overgrown and become hidden, even if only the entrance became grown over. I found the entrance to one of the hidden lakes and several more trails, one of which has become overgrown and filled in so much that it will take quite a bit of work to get it reopened, if that can be done at all. I had to cut quite a few limbs and mangrove roots to get as far as I did, but I had gone off by myself down that channel and when it deadended, I didn't want to have the others wait too long, so I backtracked and caught up with the group at the next open lake. In doing so, I took yet another route which I hadn't been through before and entered the lake from a new entrance, at least new to all of us. Most of these channel entrances and exits are virtually invisible until you are within 5 or 10 feet. Some you actually have to stick the front of the kayak into and look for a current before you can see that it actually is a channel. Pretty fun exploring.

Monday, 22 October - I installed the new freshwater pump today and disassembled the old one and inspected it and guess what. I couldn't find anything wrong with it and I still have the same problem. I removed the first freshwater mesh filter and it had quite a bit of off-white gunk in it, but it wasn’t clogged. Maybe the under-sink carbon filter is clogged. I don’t have a spare. I just replaced that filter less than a month ago. After noon, I headed to shore and to Home Depot. There, I bought water replacement cartridges and lubricant for the under-sink water filter.
                    About 9 o'clock this evening, I heard someone knocking on the hull, then heard someone call my name. It was Bob Harrington from the S/V Palm Island. He was having engine problems with his dinghy and having a hard time getting back to his boat, so I towed him back in between light rain showers.

Tuesday, 23 October - Ok, I cleaned and replaced the under-sink water filter today and still have the problem with the pump not wanting to shut off. The water pressure does seem to be a bit higher, however. Later in the afternoon, I got into the engine room and took out the refrigeration pump that I recently took apart and cleaned, and replaced it with the new pump I purchased online. I'll see if it does any better. It should, but then I thought replacing the one under the sink would solve my problems with that system, too.

Wednesday, 24 October - Finally! The wind died down enough to have Larry Baker come over to help me reinstall the mainsail and roller furler that fell down onto my bimini top a couple of weeks ago. Plan A was to get the cable end to exit the bottom of the furler while the sail was laying on deck. That failed so we went to Plan B which was to raise the furler to the top of the mast and let gravity help us get the cable to exit the base of the furler. Failed again. Plan C was to lower the sail again, remove the Sta-Lok at the top of the cable, pull the cable out of the furler from the top, push the cable through the furler from the bottom, and reinstall the Sta-Lok, then raise the sail again and install it. I'll make the story short and say that after about 9 hours, we made Plan C work. Tomorrow, I get to put all the grinding wheels, spray cans, the vise, all the wrenches, screw drivers, electric drills, silicone sealant, drinking straws, ropes, etc., etc., etc., back where they belong. That'll take about a half a day in itself. It never ceases to amaze me how many tools seem to be necessary to accomplish a seemingly simple job.

Thursday, 25 October - As predicted, I spent the morning putting supplies and tools away and in the process, organizing things a little better so that some things are all in one location on the boat, then updating my data base to match.

Friday, 26 October - Wash day! Clothes, that is. Then, this evening I headed over to the municipal park to watch a movie, or at least that was the intention. I knew it was to be primarily for kids, but since I have never seen a "Toy Story" movie, I thought I'd find out what all the talk was about. The "movie" was only about 20 minutes long. I'd call that a cartoon. Had I known that, I'd have stayed on the boat and watched a movie here. I was back to the boat within less than an hour from when I left it. Oh, well. That gives me time to get this posted.