We drove Freedom through brush fire.

 We never know what life is going to present us with. After leaving the Bluff House on Green Turtle yesterday we motored around Abaco and stopped at Great Sale Cay for the night. The trip around to the Cay was quiet and relaxing with only a small amount of chop on the Sea of Abaco as well as the Bank.

 Pulling into Great Sale we were surprised to see what were new sand bars or "fish muds". Fish muds are areas of water you swear are going to rip your running gear out from under you. Schools of fish create this illusion by churning up the bottom. It's common on the bank. They look exactly like rocky sand bars but they are safe to travel over. We went around them regardless since there were Tornadoes in the area recently and we suspected some new sand bars had popped up. Regardless on we went into Great Sale and dropped the hook. In spite of 15 knots of wind we were hooked up well enough and settled into dinner. Deb did a Hunan Beef and Dan (after driving all day) ate and crashed for a while. It didn't last long.  

 Being out on the hook is always an adventure on Freedom. Ask people that have rafted up with us. Regardless of the anchor and how much chain we put down, she always seems to meander from the original site. Last night was no exception. We were in 10 feet of water at Great Sale. We payed out 120 feet of chain with our 55 pound Delta and she still dragged 70 feet over night. This isn't bad given we were in about 20 knots of wind, but it was unnerving none the less. I think I'm going to enter Freedom in Rue Paul's race. Next year we will move further into the protection of Great Sale as the holding appears to be better there. At least from our experience.

 In the morning we chugged away at the break neck speed of 8 knots. Across the bank and into Dover Sound we went but this time through the sound I managed to keep Freedom in an extra foot of water versus the trip through Dover in November. Into the canal at mid tide we went and throughout channel into the canal we had roughly 3.5 feet under the transducer. That translates to about 5 feet of water. This was not exactly comfortable traveling when one considers the props (cheapo bronze by the way) are 1700 bucks a pop. But that was not the worst of it.

 While heading South off the bank into Dover we saw plums of smoke rising. I was hoping they were merely an indication of a dump burning off refuse but that was not to be. It was a brush fire that was right on the rim of the canal we were traveling through. As we approached it the wind was fanning it over the canal encouraging us to turn around. Slowing down and waiting proved to pay off as the wind shifted opening an opportunity to blow by it all.

 And that's what we did. I hammered the throttles and Freedom lethargically moved up onto plane. She's been a bit of a dock queen in salt water this Winter so there is all sorts of growth on her bottom and running gear. But plane out she did and she hit a respectable 16 knots in the canal before I had to shut her down because we were approaching a pinch point in the canal. Maybe she would have hit 19k. We probably put out some of the fire on our way by with our wake. Check out the width of the canal and you will see that one screw up and you are on rocks. Quite a bit of water was washed ashore.
 So here we are in Lucya, and we're all tied up safe and sound. We're really fortunate to be here this week instead of last week given the Tornadoes that ripped through here.  There are several boats with quite a bit of damage. Several of the dock poles, regardless of being concrete or wood, have been destroyed. It seems that line spreaders, antennas and canvas were the choice of the Tornadoes moving through Lucaya last week. Sadly a number of folks in Freeport were killed when the cranes they were working on in the Port had issues caused by the wind.

 GPS data uploaded as well.