Over to Marsh Harbour

 Rich's time with us is coming to and end so we moved the boat over to Marsh Harbour so we could drop him off at the airport. We have gale force winds predicted today so we hustled out of Orchid bay as early as we could yesterday. The winds were supposed to pick up in the afternoon but as soon as we got out of the Sea of Abaco we found ourselves in 40 knots of wind with building seas. Fortunately the Sea of Abaco is shallow so it never gets to serious out there even in 40 knots.  But we did get an unpleasant surprise in that the depth sounder was going off occassionally, and it was set to alarm us at 3 feet of water. So the threat of bottom bouncing was real and it was a concern! But we made it across fine even though the ride was extremely WET. We had to travel almost directly into the wind and waves so we slammed a bit. I have to admit Freedom is a solid boat and never quivered like others I have been on.

 This is an example of the spray we had coming over the bridge on a regular basis. On several occassions we had water sheeting down the enclosure making it difficult to see where the next wave was.  Today the gale force winds have cranked up and we are being pounded into the dock.