Captain's Choice blog: Atlantic City

Wednesday ended up being a decent day to leave Cape May and head 46 miles to Bringantine #1 at Rum Point Inlet anchorage in Atlantic City. We followed The Journey and Time Out out through the Cape May Inlet and traveled about 3 miles off shore. The buoy report had the waves forecasted for 3.5 at a period of 6-7 seconds. There were points were it seemed less and times that seemed more...we were surfin' the waves as they were quartering us on the stern. Surfin' USA definitely came to mind
    We'll all be planning that route
    We're gonna take real soon
    We're waxing down our surfboards (in our case it's our boat)
    We can't wait for June
    We'll all be gone for the summer
    We're on surfari to stay
    Tell the teacher we're surfin'
    Surfin' U.S.A.
...It's the ocean, not sure it gets much better than this. Lots of dolphins out here too! I love it, since we hadn't seen them in quite sometime. The whales are suppose to be 5-20 miles off shore and we weren't venturing out that far.
As we passed by Stone Harbor I texted Alayne and John, they were on the dunes watching for us and waved as we went by. They said they could see us but we were too far out to see people on the beaches. We were able to catch up with them again Tuesday and sit on the beach since the winds had calmed down. Dinner, great friends and good conversation...so glad their trip and ours brought us together!
It was hazy out on the water and then you could see just a glimpse of Atlantic City way in front. It's so exciting to see the tall buildings off in the distance and then have them come into focus with each mile we got closer. We arrived at the anchorage at low tide, which they advise against. We could certainly see why, some mighty skinny water getting into the anchorage, at times only 4.5' and we draft 4'. We are back in 5' tides, at low tide we were anchored in 8', high tide 13'.
It is really fascinating to watch the tides and land. There is a small boat over in the weeds and by high tide it is floating and you can't see the weeds. You can certainly understand why there is so much damage from tropical storms during high tide. We got the dinghy down after an afternoon sprinkle and explored a little. We also stopped to say goodbye to The Journey and Time Out as their plan was to leave Thursday morning at 5 a.m. to head for Staten Island. The forecasted storm moved through and provided a beautiful rainbow after the rain.

We had a great day Thursday, low winds, sun, temps in the 80's, Mark and I headed over to a little beach on Rum Point. People drive on the beach, paddle board, sunbath, fish and then watch as the tide comes in because they have to move their vehicles before the beach is swallowed up by the water. Being there at low tide was neat because the seagulls were chowing down on small crabs that didn't make it back out to sea and I thought they only ate garbage.

We moved over to Kammerman's Marina Friday morning, just across from the Coast Guard Station and The Golden Nugget Casino/Marina. Both Friday and Saturday the casino had live music that we could hear just as well as if we had been sitting on their patio. We also watched the commercial fishing boats come and go. They are different then the ones we had seen previously, these boats are 70-150' and have a hydraulic dredging system that is used for clamming. Atlantic City's fishery provides much of the world's supply of minced clams and clam strips. We watched as they were unloading and packaging them in ice, there are no processing plants in AC so the clams are trucked elsewhere.
The marina is a small family owned and operated establishment with great customer service. After getting the low down on getting to the boardwalk the owner actually drove us to the Tropicana and dropped us off so that we could walk back on the boardwalk. Mark and I are not much for gambling but I did try my luck on the one arm bandit...just penny slots for this girl and I came away winning $10. We headed out to the boardwalk and beach, once again the winds were so strong it wasn't much fun on the beach. We walked the boardwalk, went into a few casinos to look around and after 15k steps we called it a day. Another storm moved through with heavy rains Friday night, which helped wash more of the salt off the boat.
The sad thing about Atlantic City is all the vacant casinos along the boardwalk. There is a casino they just finished building in 2012 for 2.4 billion and closed 2 years later, it recently sold for $82 million in bankruptcy court. Both that casino and the Taj Mahal are suppose to reopen, when is anyone's guess.

I had another 15k step day on Saturday when I walked to the outlet mall just a few blocks from the boardwalk looking for new sneakers, I've worn holes in my present ones. Mark stayed busy on the boat with a few maintenance items.

Who would have thought the ocean would be so calm on Sunday morning after days of high winds that included gusts of 35+, it was pretty calm with some swells but a delightful ride. We had checked with Tow Boat US for some local knowledge on going through the NJICW starting in Atlantic City and he said it's doable but said if the water is calm, go into the ocean and tuck back in at Barnegat Inlet. The NJICW has some skinny water and we would have to time the tides near Atlantic City, once you get to Barnegat if you want to take the NJICW there is plenty of water. With the water being calm we stayed out in the ocean and being a few miles from shore we were able to see the dolphins again and just relax as we headed north 103 miles to NYC. That's right we are now neighbors of our daughter, home is where the anchor falls and we are anchored behind the statue of Liberty. Allison can see our boat from her window making us neighbors for a couple of nights!