Some of you may recall my postings about towing a tender to the Bahamas and locking through the OWW with it.
Well after 28 days on the boat and almost 1000nm in all kinds of crazy weather, we have returned home.
Our trip from the west coast of Florida over to Stuart was pretty much uneventful. It took as a bit to get our battle rhythm down when puling the tender to the hip to go into and out of the locks but by the third lock we had it down to record speed.
Crossing from Stuart to West End became very interesting as a SE wind of about 20kts picked up while we were 3 hours out. What was 2-3' waves quickly became stacked 5-6' with the occasional bigger wave thrown in just for fun. At one point we were taking blue water over the bow of the big boat and I was sure that the tender was going to have to be cut free.
When we got to West End, the tender was pretty much filled with water. It turned out that the copious salt water coming into the boat over 6 hours caused a connector to corrode on the bilge pump. Thankfully I was able to fix that when we docked.
After enjoying the Abacos we headed back to West End and after a long 13 hour day, we were greeted with a raging storm building on the banks which made coming off Indian Rock passage VERY interesting.
For the crossing back over, we endured more crazy wave action for about 2 hours and then it layed down to a nice and smooth ride.
Lake O was interesting on the return home as a summer storm that passed through churned up some pretty good lingering waves. I can now see how boats are lost in the lake. I would not have wanted to be in a bass boat.
A fast approaching storm -
Into the lock -
Before it got crazy -
One way total -
