BOCA RATON — Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio, who spoke to a chamber of commerce group here this morning, said fixing Social Security needs to be part of any long-term deficit-reduction plan.

Rubio favors no changes in the system for people who are now 55 or older, but says “proposals that have to be talked about” include eventually raising the retirement age and changing the formula for determining yearly benefit increases. He accused Gov. Charlie Crist and both leading Democratic Senate candidates of refusing to confront the issue and predicted they’ll try to misrepresent his stance.

“I guarantee you right now that in this campaign, one or both of my opponents will run a commercial that says Marco Rubio wants to take away your Social Security,” Rubio told the group of about 25 Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce trustees.

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Democratic Senate hopeful Jeff Greene’s campaign released new documents today to bolster Greene’s contention that his 2007 visit to Cuba wasn’t an embargo-defying party layover but an unscheduled stop to fix mechanical problems.

The documents — an attorney’s letter, the written recollections of the chief engineer of the 145-foot Summerwind and a repair bill from the Bahamas — probably won’t make the Cuba controversy go away. There’s still the matter of Greene’s conflicting initial accounts of why he visited the communist island.

But the new documents do provide some interesting glimpses into yachting life.

The yacht’s chief engineer, Andy Valero, says in his letter he was vacationing in the Philippines when he was called by Greene “to return to the boat immediately to help with repairs.” He says he flew to Havana, but there were not adequate materials to fix the craft so he made temporary repairs to get the boat to the Bahamas, where Greene incurred $3,126 for repairs and dockage. The biggest item was $1,179.25 for four steel hydraulic lines.

A deckhand told The St. Petersburg Times that when the Summerwind arrived in Cuba there was “vomit caked all over the sides from all the partying going on.”

Valero offers what may be an alternative vomit theory, saying there had been rough seas and that when he arrived in Havana, “all the guests were very sick” but “there were no parties on the vessel.”

ORLANDO — Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Greene told reporters today that his 2007 stop in Cuba was an unplanned one brought on my mechanical problems on his 145-foot yacht. The hydraulic troubles, he said, gave him the opportunity to go on an impromptu fact-finding mission about conditions in the Jewish community under the Castro regime.

The Cuba visit first became a topic of discussion when a Sunday St. Petersburg Times profile of Greene included a quote from a former deckhand who said: “Mr. Greene’s yacht is known to be a party yacht. When it went to Cuba, everybody talked about the vomit caked all over the sides from all the partying going on.”

Many readers undoubtedly focused on the alleged vomit-caked debauchery. Others, including Greene’s Democratic primary rival Kendrick Meek, raised eyebrows because most visits to Cuba are illegal under the U.S. embargo against the communist nation.

When Meek pressed Greene on the Cuba visit during a debate taped Sunday, Greene said he had gone “years ago on a Jewish mission to Cuba.” A Greene spokesman today said Greene “misspoke” in describing the trip as a planned mission.

Greene discussed the matter with reporters during a late-afternoon campaign stop. Read the transcript after the jump….

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