On November 12, 2013, Sherri, Jack and Toby flew to St Petersburg, Florida and were picked up by our friend Joe Berry. Joe drove us all around St Petersburg to pick up our new main sail, wind generator and other boat project parts at Calvert Sails. Then we drove up to Tarpon Springs, where Joe and Helen's catamaran, DejaVu was floating in the Anclote River, ready to depart for the Florida Keys, the first stop on our way to the Bahamas. Helen gave us a warm welcome aboard and we found places to store all our gear.

November 13 we spent rushing around, picking up more parts and supplies. There was a passing cold front that was forecast to give us favorable winds for the sail down the west coast of Florida for the next day.

November 14 we got underway at dawn and made our way down the Anclote River to the Gulf of Mexico waters where we got the sails up and headed south along the coast. The next 28 hours we stood 3 hour watches and the winds were perfect, coming off the coast giving us a broad to close reach all the way. We stayed close in to the beach to minimize fetch and therefore wave height and zipped along, averaging a little better than 8.5 knots all the way to Marathon Key, where we picked up a bouy in the city's Boot Key marina. This was a great stop, with good stores nearby and great facilities. We knew we had a couple days wait for good weather to cross the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas, so we rented a car one day and drove up to Miami to exchange Jack's brand new Ipad for another, because the new one had jumped off the chart table on DejaVu during some rough waves on the trip down from Tarpon Springs and cracked the screen. Fortunately, Jack had bought the full insurance available from A pple and it was replaced with no questions.

We headed DejaVu out of Marathon Key on Tuesday, November 19. The winds were light and variable, so we motored northeast across the Florida reef and into the Gulf Stream. Amazingly it was flat calm on the entire crossing, and we once again took 3 hour watches, coming onto the Great Bahama Bank at South Riding Rock in the dark. We continued eastward across the bank, passing the Northwest Channel light (no light there now, the post rotted off a couple years ago) at daybreak and turned southeast toward West Bay, New Providence Island, where we dropped anchor and took a welcome swim and bath. Toby was happy to hit the beach.