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.