Home to Sandy Hook, NJ

4/28/2017

Clark had a multi-part escape plan when he woke this morning for getting us out of the lagoon off Barnegat Bay where we spent the night. First, to lessen the boat's overall weight, I needed to take a long shower and let the water run to reduce the amount of water on board. Second, we could drop the dinghy into the water to serve two purposes - reduce the weight of the boat and use the dinghy to scout water depths. Third, wait until high tide to leave. The tide change here is only six inches, but he decided we needed to take every inch we could get.

Before leaving we walked up to our friends' house and chatted with them. Spring is definitely here in New Jersey.

Beautiful Blooming Tree in Barnegat, NJ

We also got to see this pretty little dog do her four tricks - sit, lie down, roll over, and speak.

Speak! Ruff!

Clark explained his plan of action to our hosts, but Garry told him that if we left at high tide and  "hugged the right side" of the lagoon going out, we would have no problem with the water depths. With that advice, we eliminated the dinghy steps from the plan. Since high tide would be around noon, we planned to start our departure for 11:30 and said our farewells at 10:00, so I could take that long shower.

When we left the lagoon following Garry's recommendation, we had 0.8' of water under the bottom of the boat - not much, but enough! After that, we had no problems making our way across Barnegat Bay towards the inlet and access to the ocean for today's travel.

Barnegat Lighthouse

Busy Jetty at the Lighthouse 

Fishing Boat coming in Barnegat Inlet as we made our way out

Although wave heights of 3-to-4 feet were predicted, as we made our way out of the inlet, we rolled over waves much higher than that. Using the display on the chart plotter, Clark tried to estimate the wave heights. Many appeared to be at least 7 footers; some appeared to be taller even than that. As we made our way out of the inlet, we had to follow the channel markers carefully. The rolling waves flowing in from the ocean were breaking in the shallow waters outside of the marked channel.

Breakers in Barnegat Inlet

Barnegat Inlet - outside of the channel

We followed the channel markers out into the ocean. Once we were about three miles of shore, we made our turn northward to head to Manasquan for the night. We did not bother with taking pictures of the shoreline as we traveled because, due to heavy fog along shore, we could barely make out the land.

After setting up waypoints and a route on the chart plotter, Clark determined that we would arrive in Manasquan mid-afternoon. With the wave action on the ocean the way it was affecting us, the only danger we were in was being gently rocked to sleep. Clark decided to calculate the distance to marker SR1 (Shrewsbury Rocks) to see what time we would arrive there if we kept going. Doing the math, he came up with an arrival time at Sandy Hook of around 6:30 or so. He started thinking that maybe we could get to Sandy Hook (Atlantic Highlands, NJ) and anchor there for the night.

As we approached Manasquan and it became clear that we could and would keep going, we set our sights on Sandy Hook for our last night aboard. The closer we came to Sandy Hook, the more familiar the shoreline became. Too bad the visibility was so poor today.

Bridge at Shark River Inlet

Asbury Park, NJ

Asbury Park, NJ

Convention Center, Asbury Park, NJ

When I was a little girl, I wondered where helium balloons went when one escaped up into the air and disappeared. I wonder no longer as I have seen more balloons than I can count floating on the ocean. Today we saw two Mylar balloons. Yesterday, I saw a bunch of 6 or more blue and white balloons all tied together. I remember on one trip between Long Island and New Jersey years ago, I saw so many balloons floating in the Atlantic Ocean I could not even begin to count them all - but certainly more than a dozen.

Annoying Mylar Balloon polluting the Atlantic Ocean

We set up our Auto Pilot to carry us to our set waypoints. Unfortunately, twice we had to detour due to fish trap areas. When I first saw a trap, I thought it was yet another of the many sea gulls we have seen floating on the ocean waves pretending to be trap markers. However, when I saw "how long their necks appeared to be" I decided we must have traps up ahead.

At least the traps today had nice tall flags on them to announce their presence.

Around 4:00 I escaped to the salon to grab a snack. As I munched on my apple and messed with my phone, Clark made me jump a mile in the air by coming down and asking me if I was available to come up and talk. Geez - who's driving this boat anyway? Clark says it is the German guy, Mr. Otto Pilot.

I had a pretty good idea what he wanted to talk about, so it was no surprise when he suggested that, given the time and our location, we proceed all the way home instead of dropping anchor in Sandy Hook. He anticipated an in-coming tide and a quick ride home that would deliver us at our dock around 7:30 - a half hour before sunset. I agreed we should "carry on", so we continued on towards the Shrewsbury River and eventually our home dock.

As we approached Sandy Hook, we could just make out New York City and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge through the heavy fog. We did not bother trying to take any pictures.  Rounding the tip of Sandy Hook, however, we had good visibility to capture some photos.

Sandy Hook Lighthouse and houses at Fort Hancock

Sandy Hook Lighthouse

Highlands, NJ

Local Restaurant in foreground with
Twin Lights Lighthouse in background (on hill)

Another view of Twin Lights lighthouse on hill
(only one light is ever lit and is visible way out into the ocean)

Many Shrink-wrapped boats in boatyard -
Clearly boating season has not yet arrived in Monmouth County, NJ

We passed under the very tall Highlands bridge with no difficulties; however, we cannot squeeze under the Sea Bright bridge with this boat like we did with our last one. We had to call for an opening.

Houses on the river in Sea Bright, NJ

Approaching Sea Bright bridge

Open Please - 19' clearance at low tide and we need min. 23'

We counted on an incoming tide, but as we traveled the final stretch of the Shrewsbury River, the tide had yet to turn and was ever so slightly against us. As we passed under the bridge, at pretty much dead low tide, we both realized it might become "interesting" trying to get our boat all the way home.

As we turned the corner towards Pleasure Bay, I reminded Clark to watch for shoaling at the turn. Sure enough we started to see water depths drop dramatically. We managed to pick our way through to Pleasure Bay without any difficulties, but we both knew the real challenge would be getting into the creek leading to our dock.

We had shallow water and the low-in-the-sky, bright sun in our eyes challenging us all the way to our creek. At the entrance to our creek, we saw the depths continuously dropping on both depth finders. Eventually, the one on the port showed a depth of "--.--" while the one on the starboard showed 309'. Regardless of both readings indicating that we basically had our depth finders in the muck instead of in water, we could and did keep going. I looked behind the boat several times, and each time I could see the water turning black with stirred up the muck as we made our way down the creek.

Looking at the shoreline of the creek, Clark figured out that not only had we come home at low tide, we had come home during an "astronomical" low tide. (We are pretty close to a new spring moon when the tides are more pronounced.) Well, if we can fight our way to the dock today, then we should be able to make it any other time! Besides, I am sure our fellow creek-mates will appreciate our dredging activities.

We did make it to our dock, but then we had more fun to come. How to tie a 52' boat to a 20' floating dock!? We ended up with the boat tied to the dock in the middle with the bow hanging off one end and the stern hanging off the other. This worked, however, it provided no easy way to disembark. I started to resign myself to spending the night, and perhaps the rest of my life, on the boat. Getting off looked to be a grim proposition.

Since Clark climbs around the boat like a monkey, he easily got himself on and off the boat multiple times while we tied up. He decided that we needed a step ladder so that I could climb down off the boat as well. The only issue was how to get the ladder close enough to one of the two hatches / doorways to allow me room to climb off the boat.

I solved that last problem by suggesting he put the ladder in the middle of the dock / boat. Then I climbed over the boat rail and onto the ladder to disembark. Had it not been for the dinner out I received as a reward for my acrobatics, I might have declined to even get off the boat tonight. However, Clark offered me pizza out instead of cooking, and suddenly the lack of an appropriate egress no longer seemed a big hurdle to getting off the boat.

We had a nice dinner out at Olivia's Italian Restaurant in Little Silver, New Jersey before returning to the boat for the night. (I even managed to climb back up the step ladder to get back on board in the dark of night.) Even though we are in our own backyard, we had too much to do to move ourselves into the house tonight. Plenty of time for that over the weekend.

NOTE: This episode of our travels ends here. However, we expect many more exciting adventures to come in our boating future.  All of our travels, including our 13 months enjoying America's Great Loop, can be found at cmosboating.blogspot.com. Not all entries are posted to Facebook, use the link at the blog site to sign up for email to ensure automatic receipt of future blog entries.