Barnegat, NJ

4/27/2017

Before we said farewell to our hosts at Kammerman’s Marina, Clark went for a stroll around the area and took a couple of pictures.

At Kammerman's Marina in Atlantic City, NJ

Streets near the marina in A.C.

When we left the dock at the marina, just after 9:30 this morning, the skies remained hazy, but miracle of miracles, the sun made an appearance and no rain appeared in today’s forecast. Since we planned to stop at a friend’s house in Barnegat for the night,and we were tired of being tossed around by wind and waves, we headed for the ICW for today’s travel. 

Atlantic City, NJ - less foggy today

Final look at AC, NJ

Traveling "on the inside" we did see a bit more boat traffic today than our last few travel days, but not much more. We passed a work boat and, spread out throughout our day, even a few pleasure craft.

Dredge between Brigantine Bridge and Mankiller Bay, NJ

We passed a wind farm near Atlantic City.

Wind Farm seen as we departed the Atlantic City, NJ area

As we progressed towards and through Great Bay, we saw some familiar sights from our early boating days in these South Jersey waters.

Sticks and small trees in waters along ICW

Old "Fish Factory"on Fish Island in Great Bay
(still foggy here obviously)

Old "Coast Guard Station" - Great Bay
(now Rutgers University Marine Field Station)

Continuing on our way, we traveled alongside Long Beach Island, and more specifically, Beach Haven, New Jersey.

Beach Haven, NJ

Ferris Wheel & Rides
Fantasy Island Amusement Park
Beach Haven, NJ

Beach Haven - marina and water tower

Looking right down a street in Beach Haven

Cell Tower
I bet they have good signal strength!

Some nicer homes on Long Beach Island

Clark backed off on speed during our trip so as not to arrive too early at our friends' house. Eventually, we made our way through Barnegat Bay and arrived at the fairway leading in towards our friend's house. As we traveled the ICW today, we had a few places where the water was "skinny", and we had to keep a constant eye on our depth. 

Unfortunately, as we approached the access to our friends' dock, the water depths continued to drop - 3' - 2' - 1.7' - .9' - 0.0' ... not good! We found ourselves aground! Fortunately, we were at idle speed, so we did not bump hard.

Black dot is us stuck in sandy / mucky waters of Barnegat Bay.
Red line shows where we wanted to go.

Sadly, the tide was dropping, so we did not have much time to act. After trying unsuccessfully to wiggle the boat this way and that, Clark ran down to the cockpit, grabbed a boat hook, and probed the water on both sides of the boat to determine which side had more depth. He decided on port and ran back up top. 

With our inability to wiggle the boat, I thought surely we had found the place where we would spend the night or at least sit until the next high tide. I had forgotten, but Clark obviously remembered, that on this boat we have a bow and a stern thruster. On Sea Moss, we had neither. Clark gave it his all, and with thrusters pushing and props spinning together, I felt the boat start to move and then float. Yay! 

We were off the sand bank. Now we just had to find a pathway to our night's destination. As we pushed ourselves off the sand with props whirling and thrusters sounding, we made a considerable amount of noise. A man with the house at the corner of the fairway was on his dock and watched us as we approached. 

Clark yelled, "Where's the water?" The man replied, "You found it!" Our depth read 0.7 at best. Yikes! Then Clark asked him if we were at mid-tide, and he looked around and said, "No, pretty close to high tide." Yikes again! Based on our current situation, I wondered if Clark would abort our plan to visit our friends Garry and Sherry.  

Instead of surrendering however, he forged ahead. Luckily, we had no more issues with becoming stuck, but as we docked at our friend's house, we did churn up smelly, black muck from the bottom of the water.  Since we had all but forced our way in here, I asked Clark, "Now that we got in here, how do we get out again?" "Leave at high tide!", he replied.

We arrived and tied up at our friends' dock about 2:00 and then had a lazy afternoon until they got home from work. I read some but eventually gave in to what I really wanted to do and had a lovely two-hour nap. Clark took a couple of pictures of the area. Unfortunately, that sun we saw briefly earlier in the day was nowhere to be seen when he pulled out the camera.

View from our boat docked in Barnegat, NJ

A lone swan came to visit

Sun!

Our friends arrived home just before sunset. Clark was so excited to see a sunset, he snapped some photos while we said our hellos.

Some friends joined the lone swan

Same scene as earlier but now at sunset

After showing the boat, we went out to dinner at The Lighthouse Tavern. We arrived there just before 8:00 to find that "trivia night" began at 8:00. This was fine except the DJ had such a strong, deep "radio" voice that carried so well across the restaurant it was hard to compete with to have a conversation. We had a lovely evening out and greatly enjoyed reconnecting with our friends over a scrumptious, casual dinner.