The Gulf Stream....

My friend and prior Captain of the Sportfishing charter boat Sea Boots that I worked on while living in the Florida Keys, had a interesting tidbit about the Gulf Stream on his weekly radio show "This Week in Fishing"... 

The above photo shows a small fishing boat that snagged a deep water Crab trap rope in it's propeller and was in danger of sinking. It may appear that the fishing boat is "backing down" and the Coast Guard inflatable is in power ahead but in fact both boats are NOT moving and it is the Gulf Stream current running past them. The small Coast Guard boat was not able to cut the trap line and our boat the Sea Boots took tow of the small fishing boat by the bow and pulled it 180degrees into the current where there was then slack in the line to be cut...

Interesting facts about the flow and strength of the Gulf Stream current:

Off the Atlantic seaboard of the United States, the Gulf Stream flows at a rate nearly 300 times faster than the typical flow of the Amazon River. The velocity of the current is fastest near the surface, with the maximum speed typically about 5.6 miles per hour (nine kilometers per hour). The average speed of the Gulf Stream, however, is four miles per hour (6.4 kilometers per hour). The current slows to a speed of about one mile per hour (1.6 kilometers per hour) as it widens to the north.
 
The Gulf Stream transports nearly four billion cubic feet of water per second, an amount greater than that carried by all of the world's rivers combined.