For the first two weeks of January, we made our way down Florida's Intracoastal Waterway to Vero Beach. We saw the juxta- position of nuclear power plants in the distance with palm trees and the river in northern Florida. We also went through a great deal of "thin water", with a narrow channel dredged out for passage in a two to four foot sound, where this flock of different types of birds were hanging out in central Florida. We're going to stay in Vero for a few days to a week, fixing things and reprovisioning, and then go down to Lake Worth to wait for a good weather window to hop over the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas.

We left Southport on the afternoon of December 27, and headed out the Cape Fear River inlet into the north Atlantic. We wanted to get south into some warm weather quickly. On a 60 hour passage, we had good weather for the first 24 hours, motor-sailing, and short, punchy waves for the last part of the time. We made landfall in Fernandina Beach, Florida, at 04:30 a.m. on December 30.

We spent Christmas at the town dock in Southport, NC, along with several of our close friends the pelicans, as you can see here. Southport was a friendly little town, and we met a number of people there. We went to church downtown on Christmas Eve, and saw many decorated boats and houses.

We also weathered a storm the day after Christmas, where we had to tie down the boat with extra lines and help other neighboring boats. We found out later that some gusts of wind were 60 mph!