Well, it’s Monday morning and we are headed up to Miami from Key Largo. Quite a bit has happened since our last post. We attempted to depart from Key West last Thursday and made it down the ship channel about two miles when we had to turn around and go back to Conch Harbor Marina. I won’t go into detail, but suffice it to say that it involved a wiring harness and the voltage regulator. Fortunately, Kevin Blair, the electrician/mechanic who installed our new water pump, was available and he came down right away and spent several hours rewiring the alternator and running down a new voltage regulator for us. The marina was nice enough to let us stay at the fuel dock while all this was going on. By mid afternoon, we were safely back at anchor with plans to leave the next day.
Friday we were off. It turned out to be a glorious sailing day with southeast winds around 10-12 knots. We sailed for about five and a half hours to Bahia Honda Key where we anchored for two nights. 
Bahia Honda is a state park and has a nice beach and a concession stand where we could get ice. Gotta have ice at happy hour! Saturday we just hung around the beach and did a little snorkeling near some rocks at a breakwater. Saw quite a few fish including a small barracuda. All in all, it was quite relaxing after our sometimes hectic stay in Key West. But, our troubles would prove to be not quite over.
Sunday morning we raised anchor and set out for Tavernier Key off Key Largo. Soon we saw that our engine was overheating. Since the raw water strainer was clean, we immediately suspected that there was a clog at the intake. The only way to check this is to remove the intake hose from the seacock and then open the seacock valve to see if any water squirts into the boat. So, after motoring at low rpm over to an anchoring spot off Marathon, that is what we did. Sure enough, when we got the hose off and opened the valve, almost no water came through. We had experienced this once before in Martha’s Vineyard and a mechanic at the time cleaned the clog with a screwdriver that was about 20″ long. Needless to say, we don’t have one of those on board, but we did have the next best thing – an old rabbit ear TV antenna that we saved for some reason when we had the old analog TV removed a couple of years ago. Hey, you never know. That worked like a charm and soon we had sea water bubbling merrily into the boat. Time to close the valve, reattach the hose and get underway. All this took less than an hour, and we were once again on our way. We motor sailed the rest of the way at a speed of nearly 6.5 knots, about as good as Gryphon will do, and dropped anchor at Tavernier Key just before sunset. A quick dinner of cheese & crackers, ham, celery and V-8 juice and it was time for bed. Winds were calm and the night was quiet. Things were definitely looking up.
That brings us back to this morning. Though the wind is on the nose, the day is beautiful, the engine is purring, and we expect to arrive at Key Biscayne this evening around 6:00 pm. We are meeting some friends there, Alex and Melissa Bartolino, who are going to show us their condo and then we’ll goout to dinner in Miami. (Suzanne and Melissa worked together at Fitzgerald & Co. in Atlanta.) Tomorrow it will be on to Ft. Lauderdale and points north.