It was dark by the time we got under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge out of New York. We were getting ready to go out in the ocean and head south down the coast and it was time for one of us to be on watch and the other to go to sleep. We wisely decided it should be Bill on watch since there was some serious navigating to do and a lot more boat traffic. I didn't sleep much - it was really pretty rough. We were on three hour watches throughout the night. We did sail a good part of the way, we didn't want to get to Barnegat before the sun was up. The inlet has a bad reputation for sailors but we've been in there twice before and never had an issue. We finally dropped our anchor at 7:00am on Friday morning, after having left New York the previous afternoon. We went right to sleep and slept until 1:00pm!

The rest of Friday and all day Saturday we spent with Bill's family in the house they always stay at in Harvey Cedars on Long Beach Island. There were a lot of Shuman's there - many of them under the age of 10. It wasn't a quiet weekend - but who needs quiet?? OK - maybe we do, that is why we slept on the boat every night instead of staying at the house. We had to pay a boat rental place to let us keep our dinghy there during the day. We had to tie it up across the water on a floating dock since they had no room near their shop. They ferried us across each way while they were open and after they closed they left a skiff for us to use to cross over to pick up our dinghy. Of course we had to put the skiff back where we got it -which meant I would have to pick Bill up with our dinghy after he drove their skiff back. I have never driven the dinghy with only me in it before. I was shocked to see what a difference it made not having Bill's weight in the dinghy. That little boat flew - and I was totally out of control. I didn't think there was any way I could get it to the dock to pick up Bill again - but I managed. Someone must have seen me do that on Friday night because on Saturday night they had brought our dinghy back across to the shop side so we wouldn't have to go pick it up again. I was very happy!

We went to visit the lighthouse with Bill's mom. Bill got the great picture above from the path near the light house. We didn't climb it this year but we certainly have in the past.

Tomorrow morning we plan on leaving for Annapolis and going straight through. That should mean getting to our home marina by Tuesday evening. Hopefully the wind will be good enough for sailing some of the way. The wind has been very heavy most of the weekend which has certainly made the dinghy rides exciting. For the next month we'll be at a dock so our dinghy won't be getting much use. It really is our car now and we prefer it to using a real car!