Left Atlantic City with Barnegat Light as our destination. We chose to go “outside” again, as the seas and weather were promising. Also, the intercoastal is notoriously shallow in New Jersey. Apparently, dredging is not a priority for the legislators here. Our 5′ deep draft makes us nervous when the charts tell us the low tide water is the same depth.
The highlight of this leg was our whale sighting. It happened so quickly that we did not get a picture. Amanda spotted a water spray one second, thinking she was imagining things. Then within a minute, the humpback surfaced just off our port side. Up and down and then he was gone. What a thrill for us to get to witness this. Wish we had a picture, but we definitely have another memory added to our list.
Inlets along the coast can be treacherous. Getting caught with the wrong tide, wrong current, and wrong wind can have serious consequences. The Barnegat Light Inlet, so I am told, is one of the toughest to negotiate. Today would have been a great day to have a captain with a little more experience, if nothing else to confirm that my timing for the entrance into the inlet was good. But that captain wasn’t available. Winds on our stern and a mid tide going to high made sense it would be safe, so we went for it. The current has a tendency to turn our round bottomed boat from side to side, it can be scarier feeling than it really is. We bounced and twisted a good bit, but managed to keep it in the middle and we got through fine.
We twisted through all the nav-aids and found a great anchorage. Protected on 3 sides, we felt secure for the storm due tonight. It was perfect. The storm came and went and we never felt threatened. A good night’s sleep prepared us for the long trip to Sandy Hook.
Barnegat’s Inlet 
Barnegat Light