December 18 - 26, 2004

On December 18, we, again, went up to the Internet cafe. While Mike did some research and downloading, I ordered flowers for Judy's memorial service. Mike downloaded a program to quickly correct the static link problem on our web site, so when we returned to the boat, we fixed the link problem on our web site, and then spend the afternoon vetting the new vessel application. On December 19, we spent the day quietly. I worked on logs, and played on the computer. December 20 was another quiet day. Mike has been a little under the weather so we didn't do much. On December 21, I could tell that Mike was feeling better. I could tell for a couple of reasons. His appetite is returning, and he is getting restless. So, we started on our food inventory. It wasn't bad. He would read things off to me, and I would enter them in the computer. On December 22, Mike wanted to get off the boat. The final sign that he is feeling better. So, after breakfast, we went into town. We stopped at the Internet cafe and re-uploaded our voyages section. It went smoothly! After that, we wandered around town looking for a few things before coming back to the boat. On December 23, we headed into town, since tomorrow is Christmas eve, and we weren't sure when the stores would close. We stopped by the Internet cafe to get the latest service pack for Vessel, and then we headed to Antraco, the Book/ Stationary/ computer/ kitchen store. We are looking for business card holders. They are what we use for wallets now. We didn't find any, but we did find a new white board for the fridge, and several tubes of 3M's 101! After that, we walked to Super Food. We bumped into Kat, and caught up with her for a few minutes before moving on to Ling & Sons in search of fresh milk. They didn't have any! However, they did have Hershey's Cocoa. So, after buying the cocoa (now I can make more fudge), we checked at the Mega-mall Grocery store for milk. They also did not have any. So, after purchasing the few additional items we needed, we headed back to the boat, and spent the afternoon reviewing the latest updates to Vessel, and Portage Bay's responses to our issues, questions and enhancement requests. On December 24, we started Tink to commence our morning charge. He unexpectedly shutdown. We started him back up and Mike noticed that the oil pressure was awefully low. We checked the oil and discovered that Tink was very low on oil. We removed Tink's sound shield and discovered that his oil pressure sensor started leaking. We will need to order a new one on Monday. We headed in to town to get one of our chargers. Telestar had promised that they would have one ready by Christmas. Unfortunately, they did not have the necessary supplies to repair the them. They have ordered the parts, but the new capacitors won't be in before the new year. So, we headed back to the boat and spent a quiet day. We still had almost a half gallon of milk that was getting old. So, I used it all to make 2 batches of fudge. December 25 - Merry Christmas! After breakfast, we made our holiday calls to family. Not a whole lot else went on. Friends called to see if we wanted to meet them at Jimmy's, so we went out for the evening. December 26 was the day the news reported about the earth quake and Tsunami that hit the countries of the Indian Ocean. Of course, we received an Christmas e-mail from friends who were in Thailand to help two of their friends on a boat move it from there to Greece. As soon as we heard about the Tsunami, we checked the e-mail from them. They were in Phuket! Our second thought was about our friend Jac (who now lives in Margarita). Her family also lives in Phuket. We sent an e-mail to our friends in Phuket to find out if they were OK, if there was anything we could do, and if their friends were OK. The rest of the day was spent quietly, watching TV, movies and, of course, news about the Tsunami affected areas.