Since our last post, we've covered A LOT of miles, 53 nautical miles south on Delaware Bay to Cape May and then 123 nautical miles north in the Atlantic Ocean to the New York Bay. That is 202 statute miles over three days of boating, including our longest day yet, which was yesterday. Whew! Our reward after a VERY long day yesterday, which included deteriorating weather conditions the last few hours, was our first glimpse of the New York City skyline.
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| The tallest building in this image: One World Trade Center aka Freedom Tower, opened in Nov 2014 Foreground: Romer Shoal Lighthouse (build in 1898) |
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| Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge & NYC skyline. The bridge connects the borrows of Staten Island and Brooklyn and separates Upper New York Bay from "The Narrows". |
To backup and catch everyone up on the past few days, we covered Delaware Bay as planned on Monday. It was a good day and a smooth ride and were were grateful. Not much to see except large commercial freighters in the shipping channel, and a section of the bay where we believe a group commercial boats was rebuilding Oyster reefs. No wildlife. We did pass Ship John Shoal Lighthouse out in the middle of Delaware Bay.
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| Ship John Shoal Lighthouse Delaware Bay |
All the excitement was saved for the end of the day. We entered the Cape May channel from Delaware Bay at nearly low tide and pulled into the marina at exactly low tide. The tide at Cape May is 6' so clearly high tide is much better to travel through "skinny water" than low tide. Shoaling is a big problem in the area near the entrance to the marina and to enter the marina we were instructed by the Harbormaster to keep the long seawall protecting the marina very close at 20' and then at the narrow opening in the seawall make a hard 90° turn into the marina. Our Captain executed this maneuver flawlessly. To complicate matters it was a blind turn with no line of sight visibility due to the low tide. We couldn't see over the seawall into the marina. Thankfully no traffic was coming out as there is only room for one boat to pass through the entry at a time. As soon as we were in the marina main fairway, we noted the first fairway off to starboard had all boats fully sitting in the mud. No water at all! Based on the depth finder, our Captain estimates we had just 6" of water to spare beneath us. Too close for comfort.
Also an interesting side story, Tuesday morning the radio shared a brief news story that Monday late afternoon the Coast Guard shut the Cape May canal at the Delaware Bay end as unexploded WWII ordnance became exposed at low tide. This was the exact area we had come through just hours before! We are so lucky to have gotten through before the canal closed. The bomb squad from Atlantic City was dispatched to "neutralize" the ordnance overnight and the canal re-opened on Tuesday morning. It was awful for some regular passengers on the Cape May-Lewes ferry as they were stranded overnight until the ferry service resumed Tuesday morning.
Tuesday was a "no go" boating day due to wind. Bert spent much of the day doing engine maintenance. Hilary painted the parts Bert machined for the permanent dinghy davit installation and also went for a 4 mile walk to downtown Cape May and to the Cape May beach. The wind was howling at the beach. Definitely a "no go" boat day.
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| Cape May Beach has a plastic sidewalk. Hilary has never seen anything like it before. |
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| An unhappy Atlantic Ocean |
As background, to get from Cape May to New York Harbor you can go inside or outside. The inside route, the New Jersey ICW, has not been maintained for the last nine years and the guidebooks and local knowledge strongly advise against the inside route due to low water and shoaling. The guidebooks and local knowledge all strongly recommended doing the segment from Cape May to New York outside in the Atlantic Ocean. The wind predictions for all of this week and into early next week were not conducive for us to be in the Atlantic Ocean and we were concerned we'd be stuck in Cape May for a week or more. We were having serious conversations about risking the inside route if the wind was going to continue to be uncooperative. While pondering, we already decided Wednesday was a "no go" day due to wind the same as Tuesday.
All that changed at exactly 10:37am on Wednesday when the boat next to us (Iron Marriage) got a report from a third boat that had left earlier in the morning to make the run from Cape May to Atlantic City "outside" that the Atlantic was good enough to go. So......just 20 minutes later both boats were off the dock and heading for Atlantic City as the weather window was pretty short Wednesday afternoon. When we exited the marina on Wednesday, we did it at high tide, a much better feeling and visibility over the tall seawall.
The short 4.5 hours up to Atlantic City was manageable and we arrived before 4:00pm. A successful 1st day in the Atlantic Ocean. The marina was the city marina located at Golden Nugget casino which is the same set up as when we lived our three years in Biloxi, MS. We were in the city marina behind the Golden Nugget casino. It was sort of homey and familiar to be there Wednesday night.
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| Atlantic City skyline |
Upon arrival in Atlantic City, we cleaned up a bit for a Happy Hour in the Casino. Tuesday was our 14 year wedding anniversary which we unceremoniously celebrated by walking to a Mexican restaurant in Cape May for lunch. Enjoying a couple hours at Golden Nugget was more suited towards celebrating our anniversary, albeit a day late.
Our original plan to get to New York was to take three days, stopping in Atlantic City and in Manasquan. This was still the plan when we went to bed Wednesday night. But when we awoke on Thursday morning and checked weather for the next several days, it was clear Thursday was the only good day so we made the decision to do a long day and get to New York and off the Atlantic Ocean. We skipped Manasquan completely. We pulled out of Atlantic City about 7:15am knowing it was going to be a long 10-12 hour day, but we had plenty of daylight to make the run. We knew of two other boats also making the full run for the same reason, a closing weather window. They both had left at 1st light at 6am and Iron Marriage confirmed conditions were good.
It was a calm day on the Atlantic Ocean with comfortable conditions until about 2:30pm when the wind started picking up and changing direction. Suffice to say the last few hours were less than comfortable. A couple hours of creaking, rocking/rolling, and hanging on. It wasn't the worst we've been in, but still not nice. Rounding Sandy Hook and getting from the Ocean to the Bay was challenging as the tide was going out and wind was blowing in, creating the worst possible scenario. Our Captain ramped up the RPMs and Make Me Smile pushed her way through. We crossed lower New York Bay and tucked ourselves away in Great Kills Bay on Staten Island. Great Kills Bay has a narrow entrance and is a bay protected on all four sides. As luck would have it, we entered the narrow channel at low tide (again). The good news is we had 10' of water coming in.
Today we will recover from our long trip in the Atlantic Ocean and sit tight on this weekday. Make Me Smile is covered in salt (again) and it is predicted to be 80° today so she may get a bath. Our current plan is to go through "The Narrows" in NYC, pass the Statue of Liberty for our photo op and get north of the city early Saturday morning. We've been warned about how choppy and busy the harbor is from all the commercial traffic and in particular the ferry services. We hope Saturday morning early is a good choice to pass through.
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