It's Christmas Eve and we are busy doing some boat jobs and a whole lot of Christmas jobs. Yesterday we strung Christmas lights on the boat and Barb stayed up until at least one o'clock in the morning doing the bulk of her Christmas baking. The boat was still full of warm Christmas smells when I got up to prepare breakfast this morning.

She started all that immediately after Eric and Cori had treated us to a lovely dinner at the Crab Shack in town. That now makes four restaurants that we have sampled here in Fernandina Beach and they were all excellent and worth the money. Mind you we have been avoiding the places with linen tablecloths and silverware on the table so perhaps that would be where the real haut cuisine and big prices lie.

While Barb continued with baking goodies I pulled up the floorboards and had a go at the holding tank. I think that I found the source of the odour leak - it would appear that sometime when I was installing the macerator I must have tugged on the hose from the head to the tank and untwisted it about an eighth of a turn which was enough to allow a little leak especially of the air inside the tank when we pumped the head. I tightened it up and added some silicon sealant around the edge of it so hopefully that will deal with the problem. I still have to get the kink out of the air vent hose though and I'll deal with that once I buy some new elbow tubing.

I am back in my shorts and T-shirt with sandals on my feet. Hurrah! This is how Christmas is supposed to be, after all I don't think that there was a whole lot of frost on the date trees in Bethlehem!

Then with Eric and Cori's kind assistance we turned Nelleke about in her dock and removed the old solar panel and installed the new one and yeah doggies - it works! We are presently putting out 4A even with some shadow on it and the other one. The old one is sitting outside of the dumpster at Atlantic Seafood, if anyone wants it.

I eventually got around to taking them out to the island of sharks' teeth, but by 13h00 it was high tide and it certainly appears that they are having an extraordinary high tide at present. In the spring when we were here even at high there was always a strip of beach but now the water level is all the way up to the grass. We'll come back tomorrow after breakfast and gift giving etc.

I got a spiny lobster tail from the Seafood Store right next to the docks and we will be having that as a lobster salad sandwich after church service tonight. The local Episcopal Church has a music service starting at 21h30 so since both Barb and I enjoy music that'll be the one that we attend if we're not too sloshed from the Wassail Bowl that I made earlier today.