We pulled anchor at 0615 and were back underway bound for New York City. Destination Liberty State Park Anchorage behind the Statue Of Liberty.

We will leave in the morning on the last leg of of our trip north... about 5 hours to get back to Stamford, CT... we should have a favorable current for Hell Gate and the East River in the morning.

We had a pleasant ride up the Jersey shoreline... 2 foot SSE swell and virtually no seas from the westerly winds... very nice indeed.

We arrived to Liberty State Park anchorage we had selected for the night at approximately 1545... we were securely anchored at 1600... our position for the night N40°41.745', W074°03.818’. We traveled today for 9.75 hours covering 62.0 nautical miles averaging 6.4 knots.

We left Utsch's Marina this morning at 0630... plan for the day was to not go out into the Atlantic but rather take the inside route via the NJICW... would be slower but the forecast was for some big seas in the Atlantic... we got beat up yesterday and that was not happening again today.

The NJICW is very shallow in spots and especially for our 5 ft draft... There are also a lot of bridges... last year we were going to take this route only to find out that one of the bridges was not operating... I did my due diligence this time and called every bridge that we would require an opening... 6 bridges... all were operational except the very last bridge... the Absecon Bridge... we could get under but only at low tide... assuming we did not have any big delays leaving at 0630 we should arrive just before low tide.

We only had one stumbling stone... we ran aground just north of Great Egg Harbor Inlet between daymarks G239 and R238... just was not enough water for us... well there was enough but far to right side well outside the charted channel when I checked the sonar charts in Navionics...
Luckily I managed to wiggle SAILS around and dig a channel out to the deeper water...

There were a lot of other skinny areas where the depth sounder stopped reporting a depth... that happens when we have 6 inches of water under the keel... 5.5 ft... a few spots where we touched and bounced over a bar... it was indeed a very stressful day.

We opted to not stop in Atlantic City and continue on for a few hours to Barnegat Bay where we would anchor for the night and continue on n the morning to Manasquan where we then venture out into the Atlantic for the last 40 - 45 miles to New York City.

We arrived to the Barnegat Bay anchorage we had selected for the night at approximately 1815... we were securely anchored at 1830... our position for the night N39°46.023', W074°11.325’. We traveled today for 12.0 hours covering 74.4 nautical miles averaging 6.5 knots.

We left Chesapeake City this morning at 0730... leaving a bit later to try an optimize the amount of time we will have favorable current today on Delaware Bay.

Had a decent push running out of the C&D Canal and once we exited the canal in to the Delaware River we lost our push... it was slack tide and we ran at normal cruising speed for about an hour and the current slowly started to run out and give us a nice push all the way down the Delaware River and Bay... lost it 30 minutes out from Cape May... but for most of the day we had favorable current.

The weather forecast was bit off and the last 2 hours of the Delaware Bay we had 4 to 6 foot waves almost on the starboard beam... was not pleasant ride at all... did not feel unsafe but it SUCKED!

We arrived to Cape May around 1500 and tried to anchor near the Coast Guard Station as we have many times in the past... The anchorage area was taken up by a dredge and rage and a lot of dredge pipi.... there was a small area directly adjacent to the Coast Guard Station and we attempted to anchor... 12 feet of water... 100 ft of anchor scope and we were dragging.... the bottom was mud and more mud... anchoring aborted and on to plan 2... Utsch's Marina.

We arrived to Utsch's at approximately 1645... we were securely docked with power at 1700... our position for the night N38°57.043', W074°54.309’. We traveled today for 8.5 hours covering 63.7 nautical miles averaging 7.5 knots.