still in: Key Largo, FL

But hopefully not for long. There's a chance a teensy weather window will open up on Wednesday, and we're antsy to get moving. We missed a window on Monday because we weren't quite ready - well, Britt and I were willing to drop a few unfinished projects and jump on it, but Jim and Marilyn still had a few things to do.

So this morning I did something extremely exciting: I turned Windom around. So what, I hear you say?  Well, Windom is 40 feet long, and the canal we're in is 42 feet wide. But the Andersons do it all the time, and yesterday we were aboard when Jim turned Summer Wind in preparation for heading out to test his new instruments (their boat was struck by lightning over the summer, and they've had to replace all the electronics). It looked pretty easy the way he did it, so rather than taking the chicken route and pulling Windom around using lines from shore, I decided I wanted to try jockeying the boat around myself.

Of course, we deliberately chose this morning because there was practically no wind. Any fool (i.e., me) can turn a boat in its length with no wind - I knew the theory, but I'd never done it on my own. Piece of cake! At the wheel, at the stern, I could see just how close we were getting to the edge of the canal as I slid slowly into position a few yards from the left edge of the canal, turned right, and then alternated forward and reverse, slowly kicking the stern around. (Boats are easier to turn to the right than to the left in close quarters because in reverse, there is a little bit of "prop wash" which makes backing to the left easier. But they're very different from turning a car, because the rudder is at the rear, so turning the wheel right only moves the bow to the right by moving the stern to the left.) And of course, if the stern's in the right place, the bow's in the right place. Well, more or less - Marilyn, on the foredeck, was apparently pointing that I had lots of room forward, but as I was looking behind me rather than at her I never noticed. Fortunately I looked up in time to see Britt (on the far shore) make a complicated hand signal that I correctly interpreted as, "You're about to take out some overhanging mangrove branches with our wind generator, so move forward!"

Britt's rechecked the rigging tension, our watermaker makes water (and doesn't leak), and our dinghy motor is good to go. (Ok, story about the dinghy motor. Remember I said that we'd figured out the fuel pump diaphragm was the problem?  While still in Marco Island, we called the Maryland store we'd originally gotten the motor from and ordered the part, so that we wouldn't have to wait long. Eight days later, sitting here in Key Largo, the part hadn't arrived, so I called again. "Oh, we've been meaning to call you! That part's backordered three weeks. How soon do you need it?"  Grr. Good thing we called. So, we canceled our order and called Travis Marine in Fort Myers, where we'd bought a few parts. They're part of a chain, so even though they didn't have the part we needed they were able to locate it at their Bossier, Louisiana store. We had it sent overnight - the shipping cost more than the darn part! But soon it was in our hot little hands, and soon after that it was installed in the outboard. And the parts guy at Travis called us to check that it had arrived! Now that's service. Needless to say, we're ordering from Travis from now on.) The wind instrument on the mast...mostly works. We'll see.

Another thing that mostly works is our email. The ham radio email system that I use, Winlink 2000, in order to get rid of spam has switched over to an "acceptance only" protocol - basically, if we don't send you email first, you can't send us email! This is not good for us, since we love it when people who read our website send us mail. I've been experimenting with ways of getting around this block, and I think I've come up with one, but during the process I think that some of our email has gone into the bit-bucket. So if you've sent us email recently (to any windom.netrack.net address) and not received a reply, please resend it in a day or two. You can also send to KG4EYP [the "at" sign] winlink.org, but before you do (the first time), you must go to http://winlink.org/accept and enter your email address.

Well, our fingers are crossed. If this window doesn't pan out, the next one may be a while in coming, and we've got itchy feet.