Another quick note while I have the internet connection (Bless these wifi booster antennas and bless those folk ashore who haven't secured their routers).

Yesterday we went as far as Atlantic Highlands. What a place! In season you can anchor and it's free but that's the last thing that is - $15pp for a shower! The only good thing about the marina is that the fuel is cheap - $2.81/gal which is the least we have seen so far this year. The yacht club here was pulling boats so there were quite a few moorings available so we took one and no one came out to chase us off or ask for money and although we called the club no one answered or called back, so that was free, this time. Normally they are $45/ni.

The next day we decided to accompany Screech to Barnegat Inlet and the small anchorage behind it, and about noon one of the bolts that I had installed on the autohelm to make the temporary repair when it was knocked off the bulkhead on the lamented trip to Bermuda, sheared off so I had to manually steer the remaining part of the trip. We also had the very unnerving experience of a collision at sea. We were tottling along at about 7 kts when - BANG.....Bang...BU-BANG-BANG. I immediately put the engine in neutral and watched a very large piece of wood (4"x18"x12') bobbing in the wake. No damage that we could see other than some scraped paint and it wasn't the first time that I blessed the yard that built Nelleke and her ¾ to 1" thick fibreglass hull.

As we were approaching the Inlet there were a couple of locals that heard us on the VHF and came up to give us directions into the harbour. Very nice of them indeed! That didn't happen last year so we now have a great impression of the folk here.

I have made another temporary repair to the autohelm mount and I have had the wake up call to make the whole thing a lot more solid. I know what I am going to do, I just have to extract digit and get on with it.

We're not sure what we are going to do tomorrow. The weather is going to get ugly on Sunday night so we need to be somewhere secure. My preference would be to be in Norfolk, but I have concerns about the autohelm. If it fails again and I have more than 3 hours of steering to do I will not be happy.