Saturday, September 5, 2009

The Lights...


Atlantic City is about lights. And sirens. And the sound of coins dropping. Even from the anchorage, you can see and hear it all. There's almost a full moon tonight - but it's just one of many lights here.

The passage today was pretty good. The waves were bigger than normal but they were spread far apart causing us to drift up and down thousands of times as the fluid passed underneath us. Our stabilizers kept the boat perfectly level making the whole thing quite nice.

We traveled in the company of two other trawlers - Cloverleaf and Steadfast. It's nice to see trawlers as we approach the Chesapeake.

The weather for tomorrow is falling apart towards the afternoon. We have a 30 mile offshore jump to Cape May to transit the Cape May Canal to the Delaware Bay. We'd like to then head north up the bay and anchor just before the C&D Canal. The trip is 6 miles further than today's but we'll have some unfavorable current in the canal and on the bay. It will surely be a long day and we'll be leaving early again to beat the bad offshore weather (we think).

Our hope would be to pass through the C&D Canal on Monday ending up in the northern part of the Chesapeake Bay.

But that's next week. Tonight is all about the lights...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Jeff,

It is always fascinating to watch someone elses cruise from the comfort of your favorite chair and make guesses about this and that. My curiosity item for the day is your anchorage spot in Atlantic City and how it worked out for you. It certainly rates highly for convenience as a quick overnight spot well staged for an early departure. I would have guessed that there would have been a lot of current, boat traffic and bridge noise but perhaps not. I'm sure you probably know there is a cove to starboard just before the bridge that is reported to have 5+ ft at the entrance and better protection. Has the cove become a bad choice for some other reason?

Regards,

Capt Wayne B
GB49, Long Legged Lady

One More Time Around said...

Too bad you don't have a web cam on the bow...

MV Red Head said...

Wayne - excellent question. We were planning on going to that anchorage at Atlantic City. ActiveCaptain calls it Brigantine. I was a little scared about going into the entrance but a bunch of people told me it was OK. ActiveCaptain had something like 9 reviews on the anchorage area.

When we got there, it was jammed packed with people, jetskis, small boats beached and the entrance was reduced to a tiny sliver. We didn't feel comfortable going in at all - it wouldn't have been safe. It was my fault for being there on the Saturday of a holiday weekend.

Brigantine is a very large anchorage and there is much less current than what we experienced right in the harbor/inlet of Atlantic City. We were pushed back hard against the anchor all night but it was a very calm night. I'm glad I have that big anchor.

And Jeff: Karen and I have talked about writing a little iPhone app to take a picture every X minutes to upload to a server to show exactly what we were seeing. How come no one has done that yet??