This post has some underlined and colored links to maps that will show you exactly where I was at the time.

Sunday, 20 December 2015 - I spent a couple of hours adding my motorhome to yet another web seller's site as recommended by my good friend Ray Nelson. Probably too little too late, but I'm desperate to sell it soon. The rest of the day was spent arranging / putting things away on the boat.

Monday, 21 December 2015 - I checked out three different RV dealers, one in Palmetto, one in Sarasota, and the other about halfway in between.

Tuesday, 22 December - All afternoon was spent filling the 100 gallon tank on the boat and 5 five gallon plastic cans on the deck with diesel fuel, and six plastic gas cans on the deck for fuel for the dinghy and generator, then headed quickly over to the Palmetto dealer to consign the motor home. I missed them by ten minutes. Called one of them and made arrangements to meet at 8am to fill out the contract, then returned and filled the 200 gallon water tank on the boat. I want to leave the marina and head south early in the morning.

Wednesday, 23 December - I met with a dealer early in the morning to consign the motorhome for $12,000. I'm not holding my breath that that works out as represented. I immediately rode my bicycle to the boat, cast off lines, assisted by my helpful friend, Clive Sharp, and headed out the river to head south in the Gulf of Mexico. The winds were directly out of the south, so I had to tack way out to sea, sailing about 60 degrees off the wind, then tack back. I had motored about 8 miles out of the river, raised sail, sailed about 25 miles, and ended up about 6.5 miles as the crow flies from Regatta Pointe Marina, my point of departure. I made the mistake of sailing out so far that I didn't make it back before dark. It was very choppy, so I really wanted to get into a protected harbor for the night at Long Boat Pass. A major mistake! I should have just accepted that I would have a miserable, bumpy night out in the open water. In trying to get into an unfamiliar harbor in the dark, I ran aground hard, but got over the bar an back into the channel. I went on through the bridge, then finally got an anchor down about 10:30 that night.

Thursday, 24 December - I left Long Boat Pass about 10am after repairing some damage done in the nighttime entry into the pass and headed out under the bridge. After passing through the bridge, and as I proceeded out the channel, I realized my chart and reality don't match at all. I called the bridge attendant and told him I was coming back through, but the gentleman told me not to follow the chart, but turn left and follow the small red and green floats out the channel. (I later found out my charts were not up to date and totally wrong for this entry.) No wonder I couldn't find them last night. Lesson learned. No night time entries into harbors. The day of sailing was much like yesterday with headwinds all day. After sailing for two days, I'm about a 45 minute drive and a short swim from the marina where I've been staying.

Friday, Christmas - I sailed south again, but with more favorable winds off the shore. The winds were light, but I made more mileage because I could sail directly down the shore south, but I'm still only about 25 miles from the marina I've been staying at. The winds got so light about 4:00 that I stopped near Lido Beach. Again, very little wind, but the ocean swell will make the boat pitch and roll all night long. The sunset and moonrise were beautiful this evening.
                    I got to talk with several friends today and enjoyed the phone calls immensely. I guess most of my friends back in Salt Lake are mighty cold, but here, I'm sitting in my boat with my shirt off because it is so warm. I had to close the boat up because it rained lightly just after dark. I had 3 pods of porpoise follow me at different times today. Pretty cool.
                    It's getting late, so I'm going to call it a night. I hope you had a great Christmas Day.

Saturday, 26 December - Under sail around 9am. Very light winds out of the south. I see motoring ahead for the day. Will need mainsail up to stabilize the boat because of the swell.
                  Well, that prediction was wrong. By 9:30am the wind had picked up to about 12 knots coming off shore from the south east and it's a good thing. After about 30 minutes of motoring in the light winds, the engine overheated. Something must have temporarily clogged the water intake for the cooling system. I quickly shut the engine off and when I restarted it around 3pm all went well. Very nice sailing under mostly sunny skies. The wind died off again around 3pm, and since I needed to charge batteries and run the refrigeration, I motored for about 2 1/2 hours to just outside Charlotte Harbor. I didn't have time to go in before dark, so I'll be sitting just outside the harbor for the night. Winds are almost nonexistent with very little swell. If this holds, I'll sleep well, indeed.

Sunday, 27 December - Now today was what a day of sailing ought to be! Having accepted the fact that I can't possibly get out of Florida, and that I will have to pay the $7000 sales tax on the boat tomorrow has taken all the pressure off and removed the need to rush.
                  Other than the fact that my prediction for a calm night was proven wrong by having the wind pick up around 3:30am and making sleep near impossible where I was. I had thought that some shallow water that I was anchored just downwind of would keep the wave action down, but I'm not now thoroughly convinced that the depths were as shallow as my charting said it would be. Nevertheless, I got up at 7am, and wanted to get going before the winds picked up even more, making the process of weighing anchor more difficult, so I skipped breakfast and headed out to sea. The destination for today was Charlotte Harbor, only about 3 miles toward shore, but my charts indicated that there was about 30 yards of 6 foot deep water dead ahead, so I had to sail out to sea about a mile, tack and go right back by where I had spent the night. The winds did pick up and I actually reefed my genoa a little just before I entered the harbor, then doused all sail to find a place to anchor again. About two hours of sailing, then seeing some of the sites. Charlotte Harbor is a very large harbor surrounded by many cities. I anchored right near the mouth of the bay at Boca Grande, took the dinghy in to a marina, bought a chart/guide to the Florida west coast, and rode my bike out to the lighthouse at the end of the peninsula and back. Lots of beaches and bikinis. I left the bike locked to the bike rack at the marina.
                  Back at the boat, I fixed one of Mother's great dishes from the recipe book I had printed out for her. Well, almost. Her's was always much better. Perhaps because I left out the mushrooms. I know I have some, but I couldn't find them. Well, the flavor could have suffered because of the bell pepper, garlic, onion, or celery that I left out, too. I don't have any of those. Well, I had to cook it, the shrimp are about 2 years old and have been thawing in the refrigerator that is warming up for several days. I ate too much. I hope I wake up in the morning. It sure tasted good and it's a good thing it did. I prepared Mother's "small" recipe, which is enough for about 6 - 8 people, so I'll be having lots more soon. It's in the cockpit cooling down. I don't want to warm the refrigerator up anymore than is necessary.
                  Another beautiful moonrise tonight. It looked just like a huge ball of yellow cheese and from my cockpit, looking out oven the bay, the waves looked like a river running rapidly past the boat in the darkness filled only by the light of the moon and a few city lights in the distance. I'm still out in a large area here in the bay, but, perhaps it will be a little calmer here tonight. At least there won't be any ocean swell. Good night!

Monday, 28 December - First, and of utmost priority for today's activities was to pay the sales tax on the boat! I headed into the little marina that I found yesterday and left the dinghy, got the bike and made my way over to the local library to access the WiFi. The waitress at the marina had said that I was welcome to use theirs, but, for once, I made a good decision. At the library, I had a little room and table all to myself. That was a good thing because I spent about an hour talking on the phone, or at least trying to. Two of the tax agency's marine specialists are off for the holidays, and I had a helluva time tracking another down. I finally got a sweet sounding (they all sound sweet to me) lady that not only sounded great, but was very patient, knowledgeable, and helpful. She even made up some shortcuts AND figured my tax at $5250, instead of the $7000 that I thought it was going to be. Yahoo!! I was afraid that I was going to get some "by the book" person that was going to try to insist that since I was one day late, because of the holiday, that I owed the tax, plus a 200% fine. Anyway, I finally got that done and some taxes paid on time that I owed for some property in Texas. By then, it was 4pm and I needed to get the letters to the post office. Closed when I got there. No biggie.
                  I headed up the street to see the two block "downtown" section. I'm rolling with the hoi palloi here. It's all shops, very expensive shops. I did get a one scoop ice-cream cone for $3.75, but didn't go into any other shops. It was time to head back to the boat to get there before dark. It was pretty choppy getting back to the boat, and it made me realize that if the engine died on the dinghy, it would be awfully hard rowing back to the boat with the little 5 foot aluminum and plastic oars. I can't imagine why they made them with such small blades. You barely move any water on each stroke. Back at the boat, I decided I'd better take a closes look at the refrigeration, but I couldn't get the 110v lights to work. The controller for the inverter is very complex and technical, and the manual is, as usual, written by an engineer. I gave up. Another beautiful moonrise over the water.

Tuesday, 29 December - I had my usual breakfast of one scrambled egg with Rotel tomatoes and chilies, and a bowl of the usual mix of cereal and raisins...but with some walnuts that Santa, sometimes known as my brother, Mike, gave me for Christmas. Yum!
                  Next on the agenda was to call the manufacturer of the inverter controller. Again, I got lucky and talked to a very helpful and patient fellow. He admitted that the manual is lacking for use by end users, but had answers for all my questions, and had me up and running in no time. I never left the boat today. I put away all the lines used for sailing and got down in the engine room to see if I could tell what a pink solution was in the bilge water. Pink could be diesel fuel or transmission fluid. Neither of those should be in the bilge. I think it's transmission fluid, but couldn't see a leak. I think I'd better take another look in the morning, then head to town for some sightseeing before the new year.

Wednesday, 29 December - I had the usual breakfast, waited for fog to clear off the bay, and took advantage of the time to solve a problem that I've had each night. I've been hearing something "clunking" on the boat at night. At first I thought it was the anchor chain coming tight at the bow and jarring the boat, but that didn't make sense. I have 120 ft. of heavy chain out and the whole chain would have to be lifted off the bottom for it to tighten. Plus, I walked to the bow and could see that the chain never tensioned. Next, I thought perhaps it was the bow line on the dinghy jarring the boat as waves made it's line tighten. Not that either! Aha! I finally figured it out. It was the mainsail hitting the mast when it was furled, caused by wave action on the boat. It runs right up behind the mast, top to bottom. This morning, I rigged a couple of lines that will allow me to make a loop around the mast and sail, then raise the loop to the middle of the sail, tighten the loop, and, this is the important part, loosen the loop and get it back down without having to climb the mast. Things will be a lot quieter around here without that constant clunking going on...and I'm sure it will save some wear on the mainsail. Banging against the mast all night can't be good for it.
                  That done, I headed to the library to download some software, but when I got there, I realized that I didn't have my credit cards for the downloads, rode my bike back to the marina, got the dinghy, went to the boat, got my wallet, then did it all over again. I guess I'm on Island Time. I hope the downloaded files work. The library closes at 5:30pm, but I needed to head back a little earlier. I wanted to buy a few grocery items. I arrived at the grocery store at 5:10pm. Closed. I'm not in the big city any more. The library, although small, was really nice. Lots of outdoor space with lots of plants with identifying markers and a beautiful conch shell collection. They also have a page or two out of the earliest printed Bibles, pages from the original "Book of the Dead" from Egypt, and a couple of copies of the tiniest book printed in the 1800's; so small you need a magnifying glass to read it.
                  Now back at the boat, I installed my new, updated charts and they seem to be working fine. I'm seeing changes where I've run aground and in other places that, had I had these newer charts, I could have saved time because a couple of the shortcuts that I'd like to have made really did have enough water for me to make it through. In the morning, I'll install the software update for the chart plotter.
                  Tonight, there's hardly a breath of wind and the bay is very quiet and calm. I hear dolphins exhaling in the darkness. Pretty cool. The bad part of this is that I had to shut off the refrigeration for the night because with no wind for the wind generator to create electricity, the batteries might get run down too much to start the engine. If the breeze picks up in the middle of the night, I'll turn the refrigeration back on.

Thursday, 31 December - New Year's Eve - Off to the Boca Grande Lighthouse State Park at the south end of Gasparilla Island on my bike, then to the grocery store. Next stop, the marina bar for a couple of large ice teas and to post this message online. It's early afternoon and very busy. I guess it will be 'til midnight. Too busy to find a spot with electricity to plug into with the computer, but I can use their wifi. I guess there'll be fireworks tonight. I'm sure I'll have a great view from the boat, perhaps of many around the bay.