Another short posting - I'll try to get more written if I stay here in the Yacht Club long enough!

The short story is:
Our new alternator and regulator and heavier wiring came in on the 3pm Watermaker flight on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Rich and Jim and Bruce put their heads and skills together and installed them.
On Wednesday night, we noticed that our anchor light wasn't on, and after checking out all the systems, we discovered that neither were our inverter, nav lights (at the top of the mast and part of the same unit as the anchor light), SSB (single side band), radio/stereo, and VHF. This is big trouble.
On Thursday, Rich and Jim checked everything out and sure enough, the inverter is toast, the other units are not working and may or may not be repairable. There must be a connection between the work on Tuesday but it has not as yet been discovered.
We reinstalled an old VHF that we carried as a backup so we have that working. By travelling with friends who will share the SSB data they get, and hanging other lights from the rails to act as anchor lights, and travelling in daytime when we don't need the nav lights, we will be able to proceed.

As of tonight, we just want to get back to the US, put the boat where it can have some work done and go home. I'm sure this despondent state will pass - we never stay in the dumps for long. But as the children's book says, it's been "A Terrible Horrible NoGood Very Bad Day"!!

More updates as I can get them to you, but as we travel north from here, it may be quite a while before we have internet access. So - consider that no news is good news!!

In the meantime, the water is still clear aqua-blue, the temperature is lovely, our fellow cruisers are fabulous, the wind is blowing 20 or so but not from the West. We are topped up with diesel and gas and water. The mailboat came and we'll get groceries on Friday. The cruising life is still good - just expensive and with a big learning curve at the moment!