Currently in:  Blackwater Sound, Key Largo, FL

Here we are in the Florida Keys, so naturally we're anchoring in hidden bights, lounging on white sand beaches, snorkeling in clear water, and eating fresh-caught fish every night. Yeah, right - wanna buy a (65-foot-high) bridge?  We're tied up in a canal next to Jim and Marilyn Anderson's Caliber 40 Summer Wind, behind Jim's parents' house, doing final boat projects and frantically shopping for the last things we have discovered we need, and eating fresh-caught lasagne and grapefruit.

Shortly before we anchored at Long Key on Saturday night we heard a strange noise, like something heavy falling. Turned out one of our alternator belts had shredded itself, probably because two and a half years of storage had dried out the rubber; we replaced both alternator belts as well as the idler pulley belt. We also tested the watermaker while there, which leaked all over the place from cracked plastic fittings - we're buying new fittings tomorrow, as it turns out there's a Spectra dealer in Marathon. We're waiting for a new fuel pump for the outboard, as (as Britt finally figured out) a rubber diaphragm dried out and cracked, allowing gasoline to flow into the crankcase and contaminate the oil. We need to rebuild both our heads (toilets), as the rubber seals aren't sealing as well as they ought to, probably because...well, you get the picture. Boats, clearly, are "use it or lose it."

At the moment, Britt's with Jim up in Homestead trying to get new valves for our propane tanks - back in Colon, Panama the new-style valve (with an overflow prevention device) on one of our tanks got stuck, and we'd had to have it replaced with an old-style one since they didn't have new ones - now it's illegal to fill tanks with this style valve in the US and we were turned away at the propane station, so we have to spring for new valves. I've just finished removing the "BOULDER, CO" from the sides in preparation to replace it with "DURANGO, CO". It's sort of disheartening to never quite finish our to-do list, but the number of things that we absolutely must do before we leave is getting smaller. We've been sneaking looks at the guidebooks and starting to plan routes. Maybe we'll actually make it to the Bahamas this year...