Bob and Gail's Next Adventure: Days 70 & 71 - Atlantic City

Current Position: 39° 23' 22" N 74° 24' 30" W

After the two previous days of stress, two days of relaxation were called for. It was too windy and cold to take the dinghy out so Thursday I caught up my blog and worked on my pictures (you'd never believe it from what I post but I delete over 3/4 of the pictures I take), did a load of laundry, and caught up on phone calls to the family, while Bob plotted our next few days itinerary. We anchored for two nights in a quiet little residential harbor with no wake and very little wind. I loved these two houses across from us. One HUGE 4 story and the other with more dock than house! The pink was actually more garish than shows in the picture.

This morning - at 6:45 to catch high tide - we moved the boat to another anchorage closer to the entrance to the ocean. Tomorrow is THE day if the weather forecast continues to be favorable. We plan on making "the jump" into the ocean and (maybe) all the way to NYC. It'll be a long day but the waves look favorable. We are nervous but know that boats go out in much worse.

We only traveled for 1 3/4 hours this morning but went through 2 draw bridges and 1 swing bridge. The first bridge opened right away for us, the second - a railroad bridge - was in the middle of a safety inspection so we had to wait about 10 min.; the third only opens on the hour and we had to wait 15 min. in heavy current. Bob was more than happy to see that bridge open! Since we traveled at high tide we didn't have many problems with "skinny" water but we did see some shallow places that we were happy the tide was high! We may have some difficulty leaving our anchorage in the morning since it won't quite be high tide yet. If so, we'll just wait a bit.

We are in the heart of Atlantic City now. There are taller buildings than we have seen in a long time.