Manatee Pocket, FL

The good news is that we finally, finally, finally left Daytona. After what turned out to be a month and a half. It was a good stop and everything, it was great to see my family, but it ended up feeling like a big ordeal. So we've had a couple of glorious days of motoring down the Florida ICW--fifty-mile days, gorgeous sunny skies, manatees, dolphins, flamingos, pelicans, perfect aqua water and deserted islands--everything you associate with Florida and crusing and perfection. I'm sunburnt and happy, and I've been handwriting ecstatic posts about how we've finally found our path again and we're exactly in the right place. We even examined our budget and discovered to our astonishment (and a very good tax return) that we have enough money to keep going for another five months, if we tighten our belts a little.

So, the bad news, you may ask? The reason we've been racing down here is to catch up with the second computer we ordered, which was shipped to Karl's dad's friend who works at a marina here along the Saint Lucie River. The guy gave us a seven-day warrantee on the thing, but shipping was a lot faster than we expected and we got here last night--a week to the day from when the computer arrived. And guess what? It doesn't work either.

I'm doing my dead level best to keep a smile on my face, my chin up, my motivation firmly in place, as everyone on the comment boards has been encouraging me too. But if this isn't God's way to tell me to go hiking again, I don't know what it is. Or at least to buy paper charts. But we had to buy paper charts just to get this far, 180 miles down the coast. The cost for the chartkit was $150. We cheated, of course, and just bought the guidebook that had chartlets in it, and have been anchoring on a wing and a prayer, without any depths to guide us. But the guidebook cost $43!! If we have to buy paper charts, we'll probably be out of money in a month! Then again, if we have to keep spending a month and a half and $1000 at every stop to fix and then order a new computer, we'll be out of money in another month, too.

Thanks again for everyone's comments. I'm using the email at the marina office, and we're probably getting kicked out here in a minute. So I'm keeping the smile firmly affixed to my face, though it is requiring significant effort.