Weather forecast was not the greatest for today but was suppose to improve so we departed from Atlantic city at 0610 hours and continued north on our outside route in the Atlantic… The inlet was a little rough and we bounced around a bit but soon we were past it and sea conditions were much better… they were acceptable knowing that the forecast was for improvement.

Well we should of expected it… things got progressively worse rather than improve and soon conditions were beyond what we wanted to ride in for eight plus hours to get to New York… so we decided to go in the next inlet which was Barnegat Light… We had used this inlet on our trip north last year and we knew there was a nice place to anchor there but we still had about an hour to go and it was really nasty seas… large NE ocean swells and the wind was now blowing steady out of the north at 25 knots with gusts to 30 knots.

We arrived at the inlet at about 1130 and turned to enter it… I could see the inlet channel ahead and the ocean swells were breaking in the inlet channel… it did not look good… we also were experiencing a strong current coming out of the inlet and turning to the south at it exited… we could barely make 5 knots as we approached… then things real nasty as the water depth dropped from near 40 feet to 15 feet… waves were breaking on our starboard stern and causing us to surf forward and heal over to port… it was NASTY… VERY VERY NASTY… we made it through and learned a lot about the capabilities of SAILS… she could handle far more than we ever want to experience again.

Once inside we proceeded to the south past the Coast Guard Station and anchored in a small cove adjacent to Barnegat Light Yacht Basin which appears to be totally commercial boats… secure at anchor at 1150 hours at approximately 39°43.290’, W074°.08.599’.

Today we traveled for 5 hours and 40 minutes and covered 34 nautical miles averaging 5.9 knots.