Welcome to Hollywood. I had to come up the coast as I over estimated the strength of the gulf stream, not as bad as everyone was making out, and come up on the coast a bit early, but it was a nice vista. These things never come up good on digital cameras but you get the jist.

But I'm ahead of myself, yesterday as you know I was sat at Cat Cay in the wind waiting to leave for the US of A and here is where I was sat.

The night before on the Bahama Banks I took this around sunset.

And this morning I took this as I was using my Hydrovane self steer. This is going to be the single most important piece of equipment on board and I'm happy to say it works brilliantly. To anyone with a boat, buy one! Better than those noisy Autohelms that use valuable electricity and couldn't hold a course on a mill pond, this thing is so easy to use, silent, and never stops working till the wind stops blowing.

The Flags optional.

So I'm in Ft Lauderdale, had a visit from the US Coastguard about 15miles out, big stinking boat comes up and Radios across. What's the name of your vessel? - Half Price – Can you spell that? - Hotel, Alpha, Lima, Foxtrot, Papa, Romeo, India, Charlie, Echo – Please can you spell the name of your vessel? - H>A>L>F>P>R>I>C>E. So obviously knowing the phonetic alphabet is an unnecessary skill in the US Coastguard agency?!? Anyhoo they took a few other details, some of which I lied about for expediency and then it came. 'OK sir, you have a nice day' I nearly fell over board, I had arrived and I can quite honestly say I can't wait to leave again. That said the marina staff are very nice, mind you the guy who runs it is British. I'm moored up in someones berth and surrounded by Sunseeker and other such vessels. Feel a little conspicuous in my little boat. Minimum charge here is for 40ft at $1.80 per ft. Convinced I'm going to hit one of them on the way out, going to try and rig some kind of line to help me out when I leave as I know this thing will pull very badly to Port in reverse and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Tomorrow I'm off to the Marine Store. I have a very big order to collect, a fair bit of it not for me, this has turned into a bit of a community service. I even have Nicks Passport on board so I can get it's stamped when I come back in, no Nick though. I only found out today that they don't know what a Chandlery is, which is why I keep getting blank looks when I ask where one is.

Anyway, I'm going to leave early Friday and sail right back to Nassau over night 175miles so will get to see what I can make in a 24hr period. Today in the Gulf stream I registered 8.7knts at one point, very cool. In the mean time does anyone think this might be a better option?

Will write again on Sunday probably when I'm back.

Lee.