Saturday, 22 December 2018 - Several hours were spent today trying to downgrade from Mac Operating System 10.14, which I just upgraded to, but that killed my FileMaker Pro database, back to 10.13 without success. I need to do that to get back the use of my database, which I consider very important. It saves me a lot of time when I need to find something on the boat.

Sunday, 23 December - The winter cruiser's sailing season's pot luck dinner celebrating is starting to get into full swing. We had a brunch last week, appetizers on the dinghy drift on Friday, and an evening pot luck appetizer party this evening. On Tuesday, we'll have a huge pot luck luncheon for Christmas.

Monday, 24 December - More time was spent trying to find and download Mac OS High Sierra (10.13) today, again to no avail. I had to sit through two two gig downloads of 10.13, only to find that neither is what I'm after. What I got was upgrade versions, and what I need is the full, disk image of the program, which I haven't been able to locate anywhere on Apple's site or anywhere else.
                    This evening I tried to warm the leftover chicken curry dish that I came back from S/V Southern Cross with last Friday. Something went wrong. The microwave oven ran for about 10 seconds, then quit. I reset the breaker that it is on, tried to reset the Ground Fault Circuit Interupter to no avail, and discovered that the inverter had registered a fault indicating that the batteries were low, but they were not. If the microwave was a big unit with high power I might have expected trouble, but it is only 700 Watts and the inverter is a 3000 Watt inverter. I guess trouble shooting that will be one of my next projects.

Tuesday, 25 December - Christmas! - We had a beautiful Christmas day here in Marathon; clear sky, light breeze, and the temperature here was about 70°F, perfect for our outdoor potluck dinner. It looked like about 60 or 70 people attended, which made for a great variety of dishes to choose from and taste. It was a great day for meeting new friends and reinforcing existing friendships. I met one lady that had recently read the harbor's book about hurricane Irma, Irmageddon, and she complimented me by saying my story was the best of the bunch. Of course, she may tell all the authors that, but I was surprised to see how many details of my story she knew.

Wednesday, 26 December - I got the inverter and the GFCIs back online again, but the inverter and its control panel are so complicated that I had switched so many settings by the time I got the power back on, I don't know exactly what I did to correct the problem.
                    Later, I went to the movie at the library, then to the Hurricane to enjoy some music and dinner.

Thursday, 27 December - Today I headed to shore to determine if my microwave oven was working properly. I plugged it in at the marina workshop and it worked fine. That means I need to look elsewhere for the solution to my electrical problem. On the way back from the marina I stopped off at S/V Cocomo to talk to Leta and Roland and to see a kellet or anchor angel that he has for sale.

Friday, 28 December - Well this was an interesting day for me. I headed over to Whiskey Creek in Boot Key today to explore a side channel that I made a short venture into a couple of weeks ago. That time, I didn't get to go to the end or see if it had an exit. I believed it to be a dead end, but looking at the island on Google Earth satellite images, I thought that I could see where it once connected with the Burdine's Trail that we often start out on, and I hoped that it might be possible to reopen that channel. I went in at high tide and had to do the kayak limbo under a few limbs and could see that there were a couple of logs that might block the channel at low tide. I went in about a quarter mile and reached a dead end but could see where the channel had once been but is now filling in with mangroves. Not wanting to be deterred, I decided to push on and got out the saw and PVC cutters I had brought along. First, I made a turning basis for myself so that I wouldn't have to back out very far in the narrow channel. That took well over an hour. I was having to move dead branches and cut fresh limbs and roots, too. I tried to cut the roots about a foot under water so that at lower tide levels, I could still float over them. Clearing the next five feet took considerable time because of all the dead tree trunks and thick fresh branches, but once I got through those, clearing a path went a little faster...very little. I was hot and sweaty, but saw an unusually shaped large mangrove tree that I decided I wanted to make the trail to before quitting. The tree had two arching roots that had yellow lichen on them...Golden Arches! that could be paddled through. I finally got the channel cleared to that tree and realized that I had worked clear up until no-see-um feeding time. It was 4:30, just an hour till sundown. I needed to get out of there. Since I couldn't turn the kayak around there, I turned around in it and pulled and paddled back. I was sure I had cleared about 50 yards of trail, but my turning basin was just around the first corner. I had only cleared about 50 feet. One reason it takes so long is that the channel doesn't go straight. If it did, I could simply clear a path two feet wide, but to get the kayak to turn corners, it has to be wider. That, and the fact that mangrove limbs drop roots, sometimes from as high as 10 or 15 feet into the water, and when they reach the water the roots fan out in as many as six or seven directions and I had to cut them all in the murky water.
                    It's a good thing I headed back when I did. I had overstayed my welcome. Not only were the no-see-ums out, but so were many of the roots I had cut off well below the water's surface. The water had dropped and they were sticking up about one to two inches. Not only that, but I couldn't turn around in my turning basin. Roots at the sides of the channel that sloped toward the center were exposed and, since the kayak was lower, I had to expand the turnaround. Once I managed to turn around, I headed out as quick as I could, only to find that I had to force my way over some of the logs that had previously submerged. I made it back to Island Time just in time to see the sunset.
                    I was covered in leaves, twigs, sawdust, snails, bugs, bark, mud, and all kinds of other stuff. I had filled and put the sun shower on the deck to warm before I headed out. The warm shower felt great.
                    I forgot to take my phone with me. On it I have a charting program that uses GPS to chart my tracks. Now I'll need to go back again to see where I ended up and how far that is from an exit, but as slow as the going is, I'll probably never finish the trail. Maybe someone else will take up where I left off.