On The Way to NYC

We left Utsch's Marina in Cape May on 10 June about 10:00 a.m. The inside route to Atlantic City, NJ, was terrible. It is a very shallow, and narrow, channel that runs from Cape May, through Atlantic City, to Manasquan, NJ. Most of the written reports on this route advise to leave on a rising tide, and watch your position very carefully, which we did. About half of the written reports say “Don’t do it.” Just as many reports say that the inside route is just fine, if you are careful.

Our experience can be summed up by saying, NEVER AGAIN!! We began the trip about a half hour after low tide, which was probably two hours too early. We hadn’t gone 10 miles before we ran aground twice. Mike was able to get us off the soft grounding, but with 40 more miles of this to go, we knew we were not going to like this route. There were numerous tight, and not well marked, turns; miles of very shallow water, and very slow going the entire way.

To make matters worse, just as we were getting tired and ready to stop somewhere for the night, we encountered six bridges that needed to be opened for us, two of which are closed from 4-6pm. We arrived at the first of these at 4:50pm, which meant that we cut circles in the water for over an hour. Once we made it through the last bridge though, we were headed for our anchorage at Rum Point Island, which turned out to be one of the best we have dropped our anchor in. Looper boats BUBBLES and LE REVE were there when we arrived.

The weather the next day was predicted to be good out in the Atlantic, so out the Atlantic City Inlet we went, and turned north toward Manasquan, New Jersey, an open water trip of about six hours. Thankfully, the weather reports were correct, and we had a beautiful, and calm day out in the ocean.

When we arrived at the Manasquan Inlet, we made our way through the narrow entrance, and then found ourselves in shallow water again as we made our way to our anchorage. We had to pass through Glimmerglass Creek railroad bridge, which is very narrow. This anchorage was not nearly as nice as Atlantic City. There was room for only about four boats, and the water in the anchorage was only 5-8 feet deep. With a five foot tide, we had to pick our spot to drop the anchor very carefully. Otherwise we would find ourselves sitting on the bottom in mud at low tide. After a couple of tries, we finally found a pretty good spot and dropped the anchor. Mike still wasn’t very comfortable with this location, and probably didn’t sleep all that well, but it turned out to be ok.

At daybreak, we made our way back out the Manasquan Inlet, out into the Atlantic Ocean again, headed for New York City. Pat loves lighthouses, and there are numerous different lighthouses in the north eastern USA, and she is trying to get a picture of every single one of them as we make our way north. Next Stop, NEW YORK CITY !! Stay tuned.