Sailing On Grace

5/2/16 Monday Brigantine (Atlantic City), NJ

Into the fog! That was our rallying cry this morning as we left Cape May. Opodamus left. Kindred Spirit left. Grace left to get fuel. Dream Catcher left. Lots of other boats we don't know left, too. Seems we were among the last of friends to leave BUT when we got to Utschs Marine I heard someone calling my name "Hey Nancy" and there were Shannon and Larry (Emma Jean from Castine) on the dock.

We finally got out into the big, mighty and very foggy Atlantic Ocean at 9:45-ish. Big rolly-polly seas, wind mostly a light 5-8 knots and on our nose (of course). But on our nose is fine as we plowed into the seas rather than taking them on our beam which would have been really uncomfortable. And the waves were sustained motion, no whitecaps. So we had to hold on all the time but weren't being pounded.

The stress was the fog. I'm really appreciating my childhood flying by instruments experiences during which I couldn't see ANYTHING outside the small plane window. Nothing. Only moisture drops on the airplane windows and the struts and tips of the wings. It was not quite that soupy today. We could see about 1/4 mile. Mostly waves. On our navigation screen we saw triangles representing boats w/AIS (automatic identification system) signals and orange blobs representing objects (mostly boats) seen by radar. Surprises were the occasional crab pot. But it was intense not being able to see clearly, and the holding on as the waves rolled us up and down and side to side. Sometimes I was reminded of standing in the water (I was looking out the cabin window in this case) but remembering standing in the water at the beach and waiting for a body surfing wave. Watching/waiting as those big rollers that weren't ready to break passed me by.

And we had hitchhikers -

migrating hitchhikers

We only had three who stayed from noon until we arrived in Atlantic City. They looked to be in the Sparrow family, one larger one all brown, and two smaller, fluffy ones with yellow eye bars. They looked young. A Gold Finch and a Blue Bird came for a brief visit but didn't hang around. And a bird totally unknown to me - tiny, 2" with some muddy green markings on grey with pointy beak and big, round eyes, pale yellow circles around eyes. I'd never had birds hitchhike so this was a treat. I crumbled corn chips and put on the aft deck where they were hanging and a coffee lid of water. They enjoyed the feast and pooped for us. They left the boat when we got close to our anchorage and the sun came out. Don't know if they thought we were slackers coming in before dark, and continued their journey or not. Glad to have them hitch a ride w/us though. We helped the migration.

As we got close to the Absecon Inlet the boats started talking to each other to see how conditions were. A trawler that had been in to this inlet frequently called back to say it was completely clear and sunny just inside the inlet. What a relief. Trying to enter an unfamiliar inlet and anchorage in the fog would have been a nail biter. As soon as we cleared the inlet the fog began to life.

floating building

We anchored beside Dream Catcher, took a short nap on the aft deck in the warm sun. That should help lower the shoulders, raised from holding on and squinting into the fog. Jayne and Gary came over for snacks and we plotted the next couple of days. Tomorrow is a no go-er. Maybe a dinghy trip to the store. Wednesday might be a long day to Sandy Hook. There will be a lot of weather checking before Wednesday. Isn't there a Bruce Springsteen song about packing up the band equipment to leave a gig and tomorrow "get up and do it again" or something like that? Feeling like that these days of boating, or boating/layover day after day.