Lots of wind + shallow water

We stayed on the fuel dock at All Seasons Marina last night.  We decided

at the last minute that the wind was too much for us to anchor.  Here's our view.

We had to wait for the tide today:  We left All Seasons Marina, south of Ocean City, NJ, at 12:50 pm. There was skinny water almost immediately.  We made it through and were passed by Beats Working, a large trawler, who was going faster than we.  We are still with Blue Willow.

As we moved north, we had to call five bridges to ask for openings.  Beats Working was first in line, so he called, and then we all went through.  No issues until we reached the NJ Transit Bridge, which was a railroad bridge.  A train was coming, so we had to take a drive up the creek, waiting for the train to pass. I had worried about the bridge openings, but they really went well.  The bridge tenders are not chatty here like the lock masters in the south.  They do not answer until we are right at their bridge.  They do say, "Have a nice day" or something similar when we thank them for the opening and say we are clear.

Remember Ventnor Ave. in Monopoly?  It is yellow and sells for $240 in my memory.

Ventnor City is just south of Atlantic City.  Here's their slogan:  Shorely the Best!

Hope they didn't pay a lot of money to a PR firm for that one.

As we passed inlets to the ocean, there was current, but nothing Aunt Aggie couldn't handle.  We passed Atlantic City and saw all the giant hotels with casino names:  Harrah's, Golden Nugget, Borgata,  and Tropicana. We also noted five windmills that you see for miles, sort of like the nuclear power plant in Delaware Bay.

Here are the windmills behind houses. 

Finally, we came around a bend, and we saw the unadorned windmills.

At the end of the day there was more skinny water and lots of wind!  We were in danger of being pushed out of the channel by the wind, which we knew was at 20 knots by 4:00 pm.  We do not want to be out on the water in the late afternoon, but the tide forced us.  Arghh!  George did a great job keeping us moving.  I prayed for some land forms to block the fetch.  We had about a half hour of big wind and water and waves.  Then we got close to our marina at Beach Haven.  Yahoo!  A great guy who lives at the marina, Jim, came out to grab our lines.  He worked really hard and tied six lines to Aunt Aggie since there is so much wind.  As I'm writing, Jim just stopped by the boat to ask if we need anything at the grocery.  How kind!  People really are so generous.

Note:  On this day Blue Willow ran aground in the skinny water as they came around a bend.  We were following, and we saw them up against the red channel marker.  We stayed with them until we knew Boat US was on the way. Then we went another hour to the marina at Beach Haven.  We were
miserable.  They stayed on their grounded boat all night.  They were over on their side every time the
tide went out.  Boat US tried three times to pull them off, finally getting Mark off the next day around 5:00 pm. He was exhausted.  We had Vicki and Daisy, their dog, on our boat that day.  This was the
hardest day on our loop. Luckily, Blue Willow was not damaged, and they came to Staten Island one
day after we did. We were all glad to be out of New Jersey.