Obviously, we're running a little behind on our blog posts...

On Friday, for the third morning in a row, we were up early and underway before the sun rose. Brooke snapped some good pictures of the Statue of Liberty glinting with the first rays of the sun. There were only a few ships to dodge as we made our way under the Verrazano Bridge and out past Sandy Hook. We had our second near run-in with a big fishing charter boat. They had the whole ocean to work with, but they set their sights on Options and came charging at us. This time I veered just enough to avoid a collision and then turned into them as they were passing, coming with 50 ft. of the stupid boat.

The forecast for Friday was good, but the wind and waves were projected to turn against us on Saturday, so we decided to make Friday a long day. Instead of shooting for Barnegat Inlet, the half-way point to Cape May, we set our course for Little Egg Inlet, another 15-20 miles down the coast. That would give us a good chance of beating the bad weather to Cape May on Saturday. Along the way to Little Egg, we picked up some useful wind. We wound up motorsailing with both engines and the main and jib sails for several hours, averaging our top speed of 8 knots! We were hoping to make it into Little Egg by 6 or 7 pm, but with our unexpected extra speed, we were well ahead of schedule.

We reassessed and realized we could make it into Atlantic City. I called ahead and was able to get us a spot at the end of the longest dock we’ve ever tied up to. Walking down the dock felt like that scene from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. It seemed to stretch out forever and we never got any closer to the end where the bathroom was! The dock was part of Farley State Marina (named after either Chris Farley—my preference—or Senator Frank Farley) with 640 slips, thereby making it the largest marina we’ve seen. We were one of only about a half dozen sailboats surrounded by hundreds of power boats.

Brooke hadn’t been to Atlantic City since she was a little girl and I had never been. We took a taxi and did the obligatory walk up and down the boardwalk. It was full of all kinds of nasty little shops, arcades, and parlors of all sorts: pizza, tattoo and massage, among them. In the words of Bette Davis, “What a dump!” We kept on walking until we found some outdoor dining at the far end of the boardwalk away from all the nasties. The food at House of Blues was OK but the live music (a singer/guitarist with a bongo buddy) was great!

Saturday we decided to luxuriate and reward ourselves by sleeping in past 7 am. It felt great to finally get a full eight hours of sleep!

As I write this, Cape May lies somewhere over the horizon. I will be there for a week. Brooke will abscond to St. Louis for a few days with family. After that, we will complete our trek to Baltimore.

David with Brooke

P.S. The picture is of Atlantic City as we left the next morning. The tall tower under construction on the right hand side will be the second tallest building in New Jersey. Our marina in Jersey City was in the shadow of the tallest--the Goldman Sachs tower.