Tuesday June 1, 2021.
Temp: 70/58, Humidity: 63/86%, Top Wind: SE13mph, Precip-none, Miles Traveled: 133!!
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Today was the day. The day to go out in the ocean and beat feet up the coast. It’s not my favorite place to travel, but since we need to do it, today was the best forecast, still saying seas less than 2 feet, with a South-southwest wind of 5-10, increasing in the afternoon at the northern end of our trip. It doesn’t get any better than that! So we were up at 4:30 to get out of Cape May. First light was at 5:00, sunrise at 5:30. I took this picture from our backdoor at 4:45 and it was so dark that I though it wouldn’t turn out or be blurry. But look at that! It looks surreal. The water was as still as could be and the colors are magnificent!
Looking toward the northeast, there was just a teensy bit of pink light at the bottom of the clouds on the horizon. Our normal routine is to make a cup of coffee for each of us while we’re still plugged in, then unhook the power. Then we go around the boat and take off some lines, and just ‘loop’ a couple of lines around a cleat or piling so that I can release them easily from the boat for us to get underway. Well….. I made my coffee and put my coffee juice in it (italian sweet cream creamer) then went to make Captain’s coffee. Little Red Rocket decided to go on strike today, of all days. It would NOT make a second cup of rocket fuel. Dang! And I already decorated mine with the wrong coffee juice for Captain’s taste buds. 😔. DOUBLE DANG! No coffee for the captain on the earliest and longest day of the trip? Sheesh! Fortunately the captain did not make the cook walk the plank.
This picture was at 5:00: one cup of coffee ready, power unplugged, lines ‘looped’, engines started, and I was waiting for the ‘release the lines’ signal from Captain.
Here is looking toward the marina fuel dock and office. The marina requires all bow-in docking here along this section.
And this is looking out the fairway toward the harbor. There were boats with lights on this early, but not many.
Lines aboard, fenders in, and we were all secure and headed out by 5:10. The ‘red sky in morning…” made me a pause to think and say a quick prayer, but all the forecasts were sticking to their story that it would be a good day out there. And the water looked pretty awesome here compared to when we came in yesterday.
As we made out way out through the jetty, this fishing boat was just coming in…. at 5:15 am?! Crazy fishing people! I guess I’m thankful that somebody is crazy enough to catch fish for me to eat!
There was a bit of swirling current in the jetty due to opposing forces between the Cape May bay and the ocean, but once out on the ocean, it was the calmest I’ve ever seen! There was no ripple from any breeze, no swells, no waves, just these little almost-flat mini waves. WOWZA! Thank you reality for matching up with the predictions! I think the marine forecast for the ocean will never say waves less than one foot, but that’s what we had this morning! Yipee!
There was no wind, but it was chilly in the 50’s, so we tried closing the windows once we were out on the ocean. But we must have been right at dew point, because they fogged up right away. We opened Kenny’s window and he put on a pair of gloves along with his fuzzy coat, and I put on a blanket along with my fuzzy jacket and wind breaker. I checked NEBO and saw that there were a few boats in front of us, and several more behind us. We heard a couple of them on the radio switch to Ch. 17, so I put our little hand held VHF on 17 just to try to hear what was going on between the loopers.
Even though the water was spectacular, we decided to go fast right away and get as many miles as possible behind us, just in case things changed. And even though it cuts our fuel consumption from 2mpg at 9mph to 1mpg at 20mph, we agreed that it was worth the extra cost to go fast. The forecast for the northern-most section of our trip did speculate some wind in the afternoon, so the sooner we got there, the better.
This is Atlantic City at 7:30am. It was a cloudy day, which was kind of dreary. The clouds tried to clear a bit and the ocean was a beautiful blue… but then the clouds came back and everything was reflecting white again. We saw several pods of dolphin, but they were shy and wouldn’t let me catch a picture of them.
We had one “AWE SH!#!” moment. When we run fast, we don’t have any music playing or any distractions. Our eyes are on the water, Captain’s eyes are on the gauges, my nose is on high alert for unusual smells, and our ears listen to every single thing. Any change in pitch causes us to go HUH?🤔 So airplanes, helicopters or other boats always make us look around to see if the strange noise is us or something else. There was a point near Atlantic City when there was some announcement on the radio, and we heard a really loud BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! And it didn’t stop and was much louder than the VHF! AGHHH! Quick! All throttles down, engines to neutral, check all gauges, check all raw water alarms….. and then after 5 seconds of sheer panic, my ears registered on the hand held VHF. That sucker went off with some kind of alert at high volume. What the hello?! I quickly turned that dude off, and we took some nitro-glycerin to get our cardiacticles back down near normal. WHEW! Alrighty then. Captain took the opportunity to go down to the engine room and check in with Scotty to see how everything with the warp-core was. He actually make a trip down there about every hour to check on things, and every report was good. OK- all systems go. Back to the journey.
As you can see on this NEBO shot, there were a lot of boats on the move today. It was 10:36 and we were over 100 miles along. Woo-hoo!
As we got farther north, we did start to get some wind behind us, and a little bit of chop on the water. We rounded the northern most point around Sandy Hook, and found a whole fleet of fishing boats and charter fishing boats off the point. And a ferry. And a ship coming out of the haror. And current. And wind. We turned south to head down the bay to the marina at Atlantic Highlands, and we suddenly had big wind in our faces! Our little wind-o-meter told us 33mph. Ok – we were going 20, so the wind was only 13, but it was noticeable!
So here we are. In New Jersey and New York Harbor. WHEW! The big Atlantic adventure is behind us. Next we’ll cross New York Harbor and start heading north up the Hudson River.
But before we do anything else, we both flopped over and took a quick nap. 4:00am and 7 hours of travel can make a person tired. Especially a person who got no coffee today. 🥺 So we caught a few zzzz’s. Then I checked on the local brewery (yes, there is one!) and saw that they opened at 4:00. So I fixed us some french dip samiches and chips for an early dinner, then we went out to discover the town of Atlantic Highlands.
This is the view from the marina looking toward New York City. You can make out the skyline of buildings and to the left we could see the Verrazano Bridge. It’s a bit hazy, but I think that is about 12 miles as the crow flies.
We found the brewery on a side street, in a very plain brick building with no signs. We weren’t sure it was right, but then we saw the bike rack….
It was the only sign. Carton Brewing lives here and is one of the top three most popular craft breweries in New Jersey. You just have to know where to find it, because it is pretty understated in appearance.
Since they are a brewery, their business is to sell their own stuff. So when we went to the tasting room, my only option was to taste beer. Hmmm. 🧐 There were a couple of dark beers that Kenny tried. There were two light and fruity ones that I tried, but just little one ounce tasters. I tried to do a selfie to show us and our glasses, but it was an epic fail. I needed 8’ long arms.
The bartender had mercy on us and took some pictures of us. Look! Mom has two beers!
This was the tasting room, in the upstairs of the brick building. Downstairs was their store for beer to go and shirts and stuff. The ceiling up here looked like it was original from 300 years ago, and the brick walls had a lot of character. Everywhere we go has different liquor laws and we never know what to expect. We learned that New Jersey only allows a brewery to sell so much alcohol per volume. So the higher the alcohol content, the smaller the pour. Ken’s first beer was in one of these 5 oz glasses because it was a barrel aged imperial stout, which is high octane.
Post beer tasting, I wanted to stroll around town a bit. We stopped in at a liquor store-bar. What? Sure enough. It was a small liquor store, with everything from beer to bourbon, and it had a bar that seated about four people by the cash register. Huh? 🤷♀️ It seemed kind of seedy, but the proprietor was really nice and friendly, and get this – he used to be a school teacher in Bradenton. That’s like 20 miles from our house in Sarasota. HA! Crazy world!
This is the Central Baptist church. I don’t know how old it is, (late 1800’s) and you can’t tell from this distance, but even though it looks like brick? The siding is actually wood shakes!
We found a bunch of old 1880’s era homes up on a hill. This is the Strauss House that is now a museum.
The sign says that it was built in 1893 and in a prime example of the Queen Anne-style Jersey Shore summer cottage. It’s a cottage. With 21 rooms.
It also had wood shake siding that was really interesting, with alternating rows of scallops and diamond points.
This big house was for sale. While we were walking the neighborhood we were stopped by a local man that wanted to know “WHAT ARE YOU UP TO?!” 🤨 We said we were just admiring the old homes, and he warmed right up to us and told us all about his house, that needs work: Every. Single. Day. And he gave us some history about the neighborhood. He said that this one is actually a multi-family dwelling, and is the white elephant of the neighborhood that just won’t sell.
Almost every house has at least one of those pointy towers somewhere on the roof line. I guess those are the Victorian architecture influence. This one kind of had some Bavarian gingerbread.
This one has had a lot of work done on it. You can’t see it from here, but the ceilings of the porches were a beautiful transparent stained wood slat style. We aren’t in the south anymore, where they paint the porch ceilings sky blue. These were a rich wood tone.
This wa a big hedge of old English country style of pale pink roses.
There were some big homes down the hill overlooking the marina. This one was being worked on – some shake exterior, some lap siding, and a new looking porch/deck flooring with no railings yet.
These big ones have quite the view. On a clear day, they can see the city clear across the harbor.
Another flower portrait for today – cactus in New Jersey? Who knew?
Here is our trail for the day. We only slowed down to a green speed (under 20mph) a couple of times in the first couple of hours. The rest of the time we let Laverne & Shirley do their thing, and they were happy doing it! YAY! This was the longest we’ve ever run them at high rpm (about 2400), and they did good. I’m glad. Because we have another big giant yucky big water crossing to do in November to get across the Gulf of Mexico. That will be a nearly 180 mile trip. We did it overnight in 22 hours last time, which was brutal and I don’t want to do that again. We’ll see…. that’s a long way off from now. But I’m really glad to know that Island Girl was happy to run fast for 7 hours. That gives us a real good daylight run option for November. 😁
Tomorrow we’re hanging out in Atlantic Highlands, and I’m excited to meet one of my blog readers live and in person!! A fellow Bayliner owner. 👍