Timbo, we weren't in Florida until 1983. In 1965 I was working for a newspaper in Lake County, Ohio and interviewed the wife of Robert Manry while he was sailing the smallest boat ever (at that point) across the Atlantic. Back at that time I don't think he was doing it to set a record -- it was just some kind of personal challenge. Here's a little blurb from Wikipedia:

Robert Manry (June 2, 1918 – February 21, 1971) was a copy editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer who in 1965 sailed from Falmouth, Massachusetts to Falmouth, Cornwall, England in a tiny 13.5 foot (4 m) sailboat (an Old Town "Whitecap" built by the Old Town Canoe Co. of Old Town, Maine, which he had extensively modified for the voyage) named Tinkerbelle. Beginning on June 1, 1965 and ending on August 17, the voyage lasted 78 days.

At the time, the Tinkerbelle was the smallest boat to make a non-stop trip across the Atlantic Ocean. Manry later wrote about the voyage and its preparation in his book Tinkerbelle, in which the sailor expressed shock and surprise at the huge crowds and armada of small boats that greeted his arrival in Cornwall.