Billy and pups catching some sleep on an overnight passage.

We left Beaufort, SC after Thanksgiving and made a long run to Cape Canaveral. Don't know why we have never used this inlet before. Others had given us a negative impression but we found it to be easy. Maybe some folks just don't want to deal with locks or the possibility of departing cruise ships.

After a few days in Cocoa visiting with Expatriate (Hampshire Rose just happened to be there so we saw them as well), we moved on down to Vero for a couple nights.

There we caught up with 'retired' cruisers Scotch Mist and Discovery for dinner and a game of Sequence. We hadn't seen either in a few years so that was quite a treat. We also spent an afternoon with old CYC neighbors Donne and Pam.

Then it was off to Stuart for a few days at the Island Breeze Mooring field - Larry and Annette's mooring ball behind their house. More fun and provisioning. Including a run down to West Palm with Peregrine to hit Trader Joe's and meet Charlie and Kara of Island Home for lunch.

Our usual route would have us run down south of Miami and cross from there. We usually head for South Riding Rock, cross the Banks to the NW Channel light and on into Morgan's Bluff.

We had a nice, calm window to run from St. Lucie to Miami and on across, but winds were from the south and we were just slogging down the coast. Sometimes you just have to throw the plan out if it's not working. So we opted to quit for the night and stop in Lake Worth for sleep. The next day, rather than continuing toward Miami with south winds, we decided to just get across the Stream and take it from there. We ran across and then south of Grand Bahama on a route toward Bullock's Harbor. Then 10 or 15 miles east of Mackie Shoal we took a right and ran south across to Banks to Morgan's Bluff getting there around 9:00 PM.

Total time from Lake Worth to Morgan's was 35 hours. From Key Largo or south of Miami that run usually takes us 40-48 hours, PLUS 24 hours making our way down there. Needless to say, we'll be doing that route again.

After 2 nights in Andros, we did a long 48 hour run to Long Island, arriving Christmas Day.