Monday, April 6, 2009

Back in the "Good ole US of A"





We threw off the dock lines at Freeport (see pic) on Sat morning at 0915 and motored past West End (see pic), Grand Bahamas around 1300, and entered the Gulf Stream about 1530. Had a head current until then of a knot or so. Once in the Stream we hit 11.6 knots and rode that to abeam the Cape and set a rhumb line for Fernandina Beach, arriving here at 2000 hours. I used the Sirrus Weather to stay in the main part of the stream. That is 318 nm divided by 34.5 hours for an average speed of 9.16 knots. We took turns on watches of 3 hours with an over lap by Bill and me on Tom and Ben, ie: Tom started his watch at 1630, and Bill came on at 1800. Ben came on at 1930, and I started my watch at 2100 to 2400. There was always 2 on at a time after 1800. We saw many large ships at night, and I had rigged the radar reflector with my own radar going. Several times I saw a ship on radar before I acquired him visually. We had to add fuel at sea and took 46.8 gals here at the dock this morning. I called customs last night and got a clearence back into the US over the phone. We then walked to the Crab Shack and had fresh local shrimp for dinner. We walked to a local restaurant for the best grits ever this morning. We then walked to Immigrations and presented ourselves to ICE for our final clearence into the States. The weather looks like we will stay here until Wed or Thur before we try to go outside and bypass Georgia's shallow water and low tides. We are back at the dock that Nanc and I stayed at coming down, and I was able to call her on my cell phone yesterday while 20 miles off the coast. Marcnicliz had several Atlantic Spotted Dolphin playing under her bow yesterday. Hope the luck holds until Deltaville. S

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