Sunday, December 12, 2010

Elbow Cay and not exactly Bust

 For a while we thought we were never going to arrive. But through determination and quite a bit of sweat in the form of exertion and concern, we have finally pulled into the Hope Town Marina. While the facility is undergoing an extreme make over, Aaron is terrific and doing everything he can to ensure we have a pleasant stay. Let's face it given the location he doesn't have to work too hard to enable that.
 The ride over from Guana Cay was a bit lumpy with maybe 1-2 feet of chop on the Sea of Abaco as we crossed the openings between the Cays along the way. And of course, we were greeted by a boat headed to Marsh that wanted to play chicken and refused to back off or steer a bit to indicate he was yielding right of way in spite of our being the stand on vessel. That's two years in a row someone off of Man O War has pulled this stunt. But given all the room out here, it's not such a big deal as much as it is a message to people coming to the Bahamas.
 Once beyond ManOWar the Sea of Abaco laid down and we pulled up to the slip in the marina for a month's stay. With the transom facing East we have great sunrises and the aft deck stays cooler in the afternoon. Even though this side of the harbour has no access by road, everything is very conveniently located across the harbour only short dink ride away. Usually several folks are aboard their boats out in the harbour making for a pleasant dink ride with social calls along the way.


A little video of Freedom on the move near Spanish Cay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woBj-ec7twc 

 The GPS data is up to date, and the photo bucket has several new photos including a view of the area around the light house.  

2 comments:

Jeff said...

Do I see 16.1 knots on your GPS? You must have been wide open. I wish my boat was that fast, but I have CATS. How much fuel and water did you have on board at the time?

Dan said...

Actually if you look close you will see the tachs at 2000, and the engines are rated at 2300 full load.
With all of the weight we have aboard now, that's darn good for the rpm. When we ran the Hudson on a light load of fuel and water, we were good for 17.5.
But now we have all sorts of stores aboard. However at that time we probably had about 70% of 385 galllons of diesel, and a light load of water.
When we were ducking the water spouts we were running over 17, but the rpm was about 2100+ then. At this weight Freedom will just about hit 19k with a clean bottom and running gear.