My daughter came to New Jersey from her home in Montana specifically to sail with me and we hit a home run on the experience meter! I picked her up at the airport on Friday afternoon and we had some family socializing to attend to first later in the evening and Saturday. We did not get an early start on Sunday so when we got to our marina a little after noon after purchasing groceries, we were anxious to raise sails for an afternoon with a ripping north wind and perfectly clear skies. If we weren't so anxious, I might have made a brief stop for pumpout and fuel. But by not stopping, I set in motion the course of events that later had consequences.
I had planned on staying inside Barnegat Bay for 3 days. I'm not known for sticking with a plan. We had a great afternoon beating up the entire length of the bay and then turning downwind again to anchor at Tices Shoal for some beach time and sunset. Big bonus was the full moon rising over the ocean almost immediately after sunset. It was a fantastic night for anchoring out! Waking up in the morning, I discovered the holding tank weeping out the vent. Crud, I thought, either we have to find a pump out .... or, we could sail out in the ocean 3 miles and discharge.
That sounded like fun since the wind was strong from the northeast by this time. So that's what we did, only the wind was so good and we were having such a great time that we made the spur of the moment decision to sail to Atlantic City! What a great day we had! The only brief cloud was when Linda went below to make sandwiches for lunch and later chucked over the side. There was a pretty good swell and wind waves to confuse the pattern and we were rolling a bit since our direction was a broad reach. That was Linda's first ever bout with sea sickness and after 3 quick hurls she just laughed it off and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the trip!
I got around to looking at the fuel and saw that we had more than a quarter tank and that seemed pretty safe. Since we use so little fuel, I generally do not give much thought to fueling and I have never had any high anxiety over a lack of fuel under any circumstance up until then. We had another fantastic night with perfect weather and we enjoyed a long conversation in the cockpit until late in the night.
So it was decision time on Tuesday morning. Do we motor the ICW or do we go back out in the ocean and hope to sail. Swell and wind direction that we had on Monday would have shut us down on the ocean, but the surf was down significantly, it seemed, and wind was shifting to east & SE, which would improve our sailing, although getting lighter according to the forecast. I figured we would need fuel for motoring the whole way on the ICW, but I could fill up when we reached Beach Haven. I never gave it a thought to fuel up in Atlantic City marina, which seemed like a nuisance detour. We didn't make a decision until we pointed our nose out the cove and into the inlet. Atlantic Ocean it was.
To shorten a long story, it was a slow slog upwind (mostly) in light winds that stayed mostly north of optimum for us and I soon became very concerned about the lack of fuel. We spent the entire day sailing with very slow progress, limiting the motor sailing to conserve fuel and I was constantly stressing over it. Linda was relaxed, since we had time and the motion on the ocean was pretty comfortable. We had a loooong, pleasant day making very slow progress until about 4 or 5 miles from Barnegat Light. By that time, I was exultant that it appeared clearly that we would have enough fuel to make it home. But there were dark clouds on the horizon .... literally!
I had to make one more tack out into the ocean to make our final push to the inlet and I saw nothing but a very dark, angry cloud in front of us. I couldn't tell what direction it was moving, but I was hopeful that it was moving away. I was waiting for thunder and lightning and I was looking for, and expecting to see a white line of whitecaps marching towards us. I was afraid that we would need to drop sails and I was torn about motoring INTO a cloud, which was the direction we needed to go. But I also thought that if we were to be hit with a squall, it would be better to have sea room, so I kept going until I knew that we could finally turn for our last tack. The squall never came as the cloud pretty much just skirted around us! As we entered the inlet and we found the current with us to help us along. We high-fived our safety! It was dusk as we went through Barnegat Inlet after at least 10 hours past leaving Absecon Inlet, with our third dramatic moon rise over the ocean! The dark angry cloud was still in front of us, but moving northwest away from us!
We had just enough fuel to motor to our marina in the dark and I landed Andante at her slip without even nudging the side pilings. We had a long drive back to Allamuchy and we had 2 near misses with disaster on the road. Somehow we made it home safe and all is well!
I had planned on staying inside Barnegat Bay for 3 days. I'm not known for sticking with a plan. We had a great afternoon beating up the entire length of the bay and then turning downwind again to anchor at Tices Shoal for some beach time and sunset. Big bonus was the full moon rising over the ocean almost immediately after sunset. It was a fantastic night for anchoring out! Waking up in the morning, I discovered the holding tank weeping out the vent. Crud, I thought, either we have to find a pump out .... or, we could sail out in the ocean 3 miles and discharge.
That sounded like fun since the wind was strong from the northeast by this time. So that's what we did, only the wind was so good and we were having such a great time that we made the spur of the moment decision to sail to Atlantic City! What a great day we had! The only brief cloud was when Linda went below to make sandwiches for lunch and later chucked over the side. There was a pretty good swell and wind waves to confuse the pattern and we were rolling a bit since our direction was a broad reach. That was Linda's first ever bout with sea sickness and after 3 quick hurls she just laughed it off and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the trip!
I got around to looking at the fuel and saw that we had more than a quarter tank and that seemed pretty safe. Since we use so little fuel, I generally do not give much thought to fueling and I have never had any high anxiety over a lack of fuel under any circumstance up until then. We had another fantastic night with perfect weather and we enjoyed a long conversation in the cockpit until late in the night.
So it was decision time on Tuesday morning. Do we motor the ICW or do we go back out in the ocean and hope to sail. Swell and wind direction that we had on Monday would have shut us down on the ocean, but the surf was down significantly, it seemed, and wind was shifting to east & SE, which would improve our sailing, although getting lighter according to the forecast. I figured we would need fuel for motoring the whole way on the ICW, but I could fill up when we reached Beach Haven. I never gave it a thought to fuel up in Atlantic City marina, which seemed like a nuisance detour. We didn't make a decision until we pointed our nose out the cove and into the inlet. Atlantic Ocean it was.
To shorten a long story, it was a slow slog upwind (mostly) in light winds that stayed mostly north of optimum for us and I soon became very concerned about the lack of fuel. We spent the entire day sailing with very slow progress, limiting the motor sailing to conserve fuel and I was constantly stressing over it. Linda was relaxed, since we had time and the motion on the ocean was pretty comfortable. We had a loooong, pleasant day making very slow progress until about 4 or 5 miles from Barnegat Light. By that time, I was exultant that it appeared clearly that we would have enough fuel to make it home. But there were dark clouds on the horizon .... literally!
I had to make one more tack out into the ocean to make our final push to the inlet and I saw nothing but a very dark, angry cloud in front of us. I couldn't tell what direction it was moving, but I was hopeful that it was moving away. I was waiting for thunder and lightning and I was looking for, and expecting to see a white line of whitecaps marching towards us. I was afraid that we would need to drop sails and I was torn about motoring INTO a cloud, which was the direction we needed to go. But I also thought that if we were to be hit with a squall, it would be better to have sea room, so I kept going until I knew that we could finally turn for our last tack. The squall never came as the cloud pretty much just skirted around us! As we entered the inlet and we found the current with us to help us along. We high-fived our safety! It was dusk as we went through Barnegat Inlet after at least 10 hours past leaving Absecon Inlet, with our third dramatic moon rise over the ocean! The dark angry cloud was still in front of us, but moving northwest away from us!
We had just enough fuel to motor to our marina in the dark and I landed Andante at her slip without even nudging the side pilings. We had a long drive back to Allamuchy and we had 2 near misses with disaster on the road. Somehow we made it home safe and all is well!