July 14th- Cape May to Barnegat Bay, NJ

We kept looking at the weather and wind directions on the NOAA web site. I still didn’t have a firm plan on when to transit the New Jersey coast. It’s about 110 nautical miles through the North Atlantic Ocean with NJ as a lee shore. We had some problems on the way south and I didn’t want a repeat. In the end the decision was made by the power boats in Cape May harbor. Too many wakes. The commercial fleet starts heading out at 2:00 in the morning. Catalpa was bouncing all over the place with the dinghy slamming into the stern. Time to go. We wouldn’t have any consistent southerlies for a few days but I figured we’d just deal with it.

Atlantic City on the horizon.

Hello Atlantic City. Goodbye Atlantic City.

The wind was out of the north (maybe a little NNE). A boat has to travel northwest to get around Atlantic City. We were able to sail and also used the diesel to keep our speed up. We got to Atlantic City and just kept going.

About half way from Cape May to Sandy Hook is Barnegat Inlet. The inlet is good if the sea is calm. It’s very dangerous if the North Atlantic surf is up. In our travels, everyone I’ve spoken to avoids it. This was my second time surfing in the inlet with Catalpa. The wind was less than 15 knots, so not bad. The anchorage is ideal. Very protected. Lots of room. Scenic. Quiet. Of course there is a nice beach for some Oliver festivities. Later in the day the wind switched to southeast and pushed us along. We dropped the hook around 7:30 pm. Today was roughly 66 nautical miles.

Barnegat Light.

July 15th and 16th- Barnegat Bay to Atlantic Highlands, NJ

We woke to a wind coming out of the North again. Not the right direction for us. All of the weather prognosticators predicted the wind to switch to East. East makes for waves but the wind speed would be lower after the switch. I tied a reef in the mains’l before pulling the anchor up.

Going out of the inlet was exciting. We had an ebb current pushing us along. The waves were bigger today. We had A LOT of green water blasting over the bow. If we had any leaks we’d know about it. I rebedded most of the deck hardware a few years ago. No leaks. After we were out, we heard over the VHF radio that there was a 20′ power boat up on the rocks. Eventually they got themselves off.

We started tacking our way north along the NJ coast. Once I was oriented to the wind and wave situation I started doing some real sailing. Lynne brought up our little transistor radio and I tuned into some NJ rock station. Four tacks later, we were even catching up to another sailboat that was just powering into the waves. It was fun. I never did get to catch the other boat as the wind started to change on my last big push. Around mid day the wind moderated and came out of the East as predicted. By the end of the day we were running the diesel to keep up our speed. The sea still had some good size waves which knocks the wind out of the sails when the breeze is not strong enough.

We rounded Sandy Hook and brought Catalpa up to Atlantic Highlands to anchor for the night. Today was approximately 52 nautical miles (counting the trip up Sandy Hook Bay). We were pretty tired but felt good about transiting the NJ coast in 2 days (without mayhem). Some people do it in just one long overnight sail. Hey, we’re day sailors! Two days is good for us.

Today, July 16th, we’re staying anchored here. The captain and crew are tired from the trip. We also need to find water, ice, bread, and maybe a few gallons of diesel. This morning it was 70 degrees. We were a little cold. I feel like we are back in the Northeast again. We may go up the East River tomorrow or anchor at Sandy Hook. There is also a possibility of rain. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Asbury Park.

Back amongst the ships. I wonder what size anchor he has?

New York City to starboard.

Catalpa anchored off of Atlantic Highlands.