  We demonstrate a fast production of large 23Na Bose-Einstein condensates in
an optically plugged, magnetic quadrupole trap. A single global minimum of the
trapping potential is generated by slightly displacing the plug beam from the
center of the quadrupole field. With a dark magneto-optical trap and a simple
rf evaporation, our system produces a condensate with N = 10^7 atoms every 17
s. The Majorana loss rates and the resultant heating rates for various
temperatures are measured with and without plugging. The average energy of a
spin-flipped atom is almost linearly proportional to temperature and determined
to be about 60% of the average energy of a trapped atom. We present a numerical
study of the evaporation dynamics in a plugged linear trap.
