Boot Key Harbor

Sunday morning, we woke up and had coffee in a leisurely manner.  (We've earned that leisurely coffee, I say.)  Had to back out of that tricky slip, pas the boat parked behind us.  And I did it masterfully!  The big post we would have hit was just far enough back for us to get moving backward and get water flowing over the tiller for steerage.  And I slipped right past that post and the parked boat.  Whoop!  Then back out to the Atlantic.  It was still quite bumpy out there, but better than the day before.  We had to zigzag down the coast because the waves on our beam rocked us mightily and made me uncomfortable.  (Didn't want to fall out of the seat; that would have been embarrassing!)  As it was, I drove the whole way with my right foot on the seat opposite me to keep me braced.  But it wasn't dangerous, just a bit of a wild ride. 
And you know what we saw?  Well, we passed a little plastic bottle-looking thing floating next to us.  I couldn't figure out what it was.  Some kind of new crab pot ball?  Not very visible.  I forgot about it.  Until we came across another one.  This one was closer, and maybe the water a little less rocky, so I got a better look at it.  It was bluish-clear and full of air.  But then there were dark tentacles hanging down.  It was a Portuguese Man-Of-War!!!  A little one, only about 5 inches across the bell.  But so cool!  I'd never seen one before.  We saw a few more going down the coast.  And a couple of small sea turtles.  I read yesterday that sea turtles feed on them, so that would explain why we saw turtles in their vicinity.  Awesome!
Right, back to the travels.  The waves got smaller as we headed down the coast.  We got into Boot Key Harbor with no incident and tied up to the mooring ball with little incident (old crappy rope and a dropped boat hook).  Signed in at the marina office, where they told us we had only seven days to replace our sanitation system (toilet).  We have a little porta-potty, and they don't allow those here.  Replacing the system will cost  hundreds of dollars.  We're just not ready for that kind of installation undertaking right now.  We don't have the room, the funds, or the patience for it.  So we'll probably be gone in a few days.  And anchored at the end of the bay, most likely.  We'll see.  I don't like the marina forcing us into expensive renovations.  We've been getting along fine with what we've got.  And I'll be really unhappy if they sic the Coast Guard on us (we've heard they've done it before).  *grumpy grumble*
But in other news.  We had a mechanic out to look at the engine yesterday.  Didn't take him long to yank off the mixing elbow (whatever that is) and declare it a mess.  Apparently, it was pretty clogged.  Luckily, Yanmar did have the part (pretty good for a 35-year-old engine), and it should be here tomorrow.  So maybe tomorrow we'll have a fixed engine.  He said they were 98% sure that's the problem.  If that doesn't fix everything, then they'll have to start digging and finding what's going on.  I hope it's just the mixing elbow.  At $100 an hour, troubleshooting will be terribly expensive.
But for now, we're enjoying sunny, warm weather.  Tomorrow will bring something new, hopefully something awesome.