Weather and seas still not being cooperative so we are stuck here in Atlantic City for another day. Looks like it will be "acceptable" to head out tomorrow on Friday... We have had northwest winds all day and northwest winds are forecast for Friday... so we plan to hug the coast and go... :)

Weather forecast for dense fog and 4-5 seas today so we decided to stay at the dock here in Atlantic City. Hopefully the cold front forecast will arrive sooner and we will be able to get underway south sooner.

We were out of bed at 0600 and prepared to depart…Susan off on for quick trip to land with Beecha and we were off the dock and underway at approximately 0645.. Cape May, NJ as our planned destination for the day.

Watched an awesome sunrise as we exited Manasquan Inlet… the lack of fishermen yesterday was already being made up for today as several boats zipped past us out the inlet. We exited the inlet into the Atlantic to find the weather and seas forecast to a little off… supposed to have been 2 foot seas in a SE swell with a 9 second period… that is a very comfortable sea state to travel in for us… however, we immediately saw 3 to 4 seas out of the SE with maybe a 4-5 second period… this is not the most pleasant conditions to cruise in but we needed to make Cape May as there was much worse conditions forecast for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as a cold front passed over the area.

Susan was not a happy camper at all with these conditions… the 3-4 seas were not the issue… it was that rogue 6 foot wave that came occasionally… plus did I mention the fishermen out today… dozens and dozens of them all going different directions that added boat wakes in all directions on top of everything else. It was like a washing machine… ?

We continued on in hopes that once a few miles from the inlet and the fisherman things would settle in and we would have waves form a single direction that we could deal with… and we did find that things settled down a bit after we were well away from the fishing boat traffic, but we still had the 3-4 seas with those occasional 6 foot rogue waves. We decided it would be tolerable and we would be making a course change to the SW in a few hours at Barnegat Light Inlet that would improve our attitude to the waves and smooth the ride.

We still had quite a few fishermen around us but all smaller boats now that were not making a lot of wake… just getting in the way… but I was finding that they were all moving out of the way as we approached them… then we came upon the 24’ Grady White that was following the birds feeding on bait… he was bouncing all around in front of us moving several times but not because we were approaching him... only because the birds and bait moved… then one time the bait and birds did not move away as we approached and neither did the Grady White… I could see he was not going to move or even look at us… I started changing course with the autopilot to avoid him… 10 degrees, 20 degrees, 30 degrees… he kept moving in front of us not seeming to care that he had 60 tons of steel bearing down on him… I actually thought he was going drive right in to us when he finally turned to his port and zipped away… flipping us off as he sped away from us. I had turned almost 60 degrees to try and avoid him… I corrected our course and brought SAILS back to cruising speed… 7 knots… ZOOM!

We made our course change at Barnegat Light Inlet and the difference in made in the ride was great! Still not ideal conditions but would be good for the next few hours until we made our next turn to the SW.

The number of fishermen thinned out as we moved farther and farther away from Barnegat Light which was nice… could not figure out why we had so many out today… then it dawned on us that is was a holiday… Veteran’s Day. Neither of us rarely know what day of the week it is… let alone the date... ?

Probably 10 miles south of Barnegat Light we had a nice surprise... off our starboard side we spotted what appeared like a whale or whales breaching the surface… they seemed to stay quarter mile or so away from us… then one breached about 100 feet off our starboard side… it was gigantic… don’t know what kind of whale it was… just it was BIG and close… last time we saw a whale it was just off Barnegat Light Inlet… was exciting to see one and so close to us… did not see them again after this… guess we scared him as much as he scared us being so close… ?

Our next course change arrived about an hour before Atlantic City. It was not a good change and it was just enough to make things uncomfortable again… 3-4 almost on the beam now and they were probably more like 4-5 seas now and the rogue was of course larger and was causing things to shift around… we kept hearing noises and both looking at one another and says… “What was that that moved?” At this point we had 6-7 hours to make Cape May… if anything conditions would get worse… we the decision… abort and stop in Atlantic City… this meant we would most likely be stuck there for a 2-3 days as the cold front passed through the area... ?

We turned into the Absecon Inlet toward Atlantic City at approximately 1415 and were securely docked at Gardner’s Basin Marina at 1445. Our location for the night… N39°22.579’, W074°25.274’. We traveled today for 9.75 hours covering 68.9 nautical miles averaging 7.0 knots.