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Woo hoo!  Back in the ICW system!  Time to make tracks in familiar territory from Clearwater to Marina Jack in Sarasota. Calm waters and early departure, just the way the Captain likes it. The Clearwater Marina was right next to this bridge. Hmmm, doesn't look like Carrabelle. Back in the beautiful section of the Florida Waterway. Save on dockage fees, keep your sailboat in your swimming pool.  Hurricane damage more evident as we go South. Was it Helene or Milton? Very unusual to see one that is in an upright position. Still sad. More bridges?? Go figure... The Don Cesar Hotel on St Pete Beach, a landmark for vessels on the Gulf and airplanes flying into St Pete's Albert Whitted Field, my old airport. Once again, we were being watched... Oh look, another bridge! These birds were roosting on the remains of an old boat. The Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay. It's big! A shrimp boat. Purple paint was on discount. At Marina Jack.  Closed for a little while after hurr...

DAY 218 to 221 November 21-24 More time at Carrabelle, FL waiting for calm winds to cross "the bend."  One captain described it as "spend a day at Carrabelle  you have spent a month there." So what do you do?? Paul baked bread. We both drank. We ate. We walked uptown. We crawled the walls?? No, but we were ready to move on. The day before we left Carrabelle our friends, Susan & Bill, arrived on their boat, Soul Shine. We had last seen them on the way to Nashville.  We enjoyed catching up and and having a long lunch with them. It is a GO!! We can leave this afternoon. The jump...  We've been waiting for the weather to do this.  In real terms, any waves more than a foot are bad.  Wind over 12 knots is bad.  It's been bad forever.  The weather prognosticators message for Saturday was, "it's mostly OK, but Sunday is better."  But each forecast update showed improvement, so we left. We got underway at 3:30 PM with the plan to run overnight and...