We made it Wednesday afternoon to John's Pass. We're really tired and are going to sleep. More tomorrow with pictures. We are south of Clearwater.

Updated our "voyage" entry. This morning (Thursday 11/10) we were a center of fishing! There was good fishing off our stern:


And good fishing right alongside! But he says they are all small stuff:


There were a lot of opening bridges today. Unfortunately, I spent all my blog-time updating the passage from Apalachicola, so the John's Pass-to-Sarasota will have to hold for updates until tomorrow. I did get the images downloaded and reduced, at least.

The big news was the starboard engine, which, despite its fabulous new filter, stopped partway through our trip. There was no water coming out of the exhaust. Derek opened up the raw-water pump and the impeller was stripped of its little flappy things ("blades") -- all but one were broken off and somewhere else. He tried just replacing the impeller, but after starting there was still no water getting through and he shut the engine down before it stripped another impeller. So the new impeller was still OK. After we arrived at the dock (Marina Jack's in Sarasota), Derek disassembled various parts of the engine's cooling system, and he found all five of the broken-off blades of the impeller that had shredded. PLUS five more blades. Yes, sometime in the past, an impeller had shredded and the owner or whoever worked on the engine took out the stripped impeller from the little case that holds it, and replaced it with a new one and put the cover back on. TEN pieces of impeller blade were trapped in a little strainer thingie farther the raw-water path: five from our impeller, and the other five from who-knows-when. Thank goodness for little strainer thingies, it would be tough luck if those blades got wedged somewhere harder to get to. So now the starboard engine is purring again, and another bugbear of engine repair has been vanquished!

I'm doing laundry. We really needed it, but it takes a long time. One cool thing about being here is that Whole Foods is about five blocks away and is open until 9 pm. Yum! Also, the marina has a free shuttle to West Marine and Publix, for those staples it would be mad to buy at Whole Foods :-)

Weather supposed to come in tonight and stay tomorrow, then move on. Pictures and such tomorrow... fair winds to all!