We woke early morning to get an early start and discovered the winds had increased dramatically and it was raining… checking the weather we found an alert for a mid Atlantic winter storm approaching the area… high winds 30-35 knots with gusts to 45 knots… not a good day to travel… we needed to be some place secure… a dock would be preferable… Not knowing what was south of us for water depths or a safe dock, we decided to turn back and go to the dock we had been at in Atlantic City… actually we were still in Atlantic City so we were just changing locations… :)

We departed at 0745 hours and headed back north… we had the railroad bridge ahead which was no problem to get opened… but we had a rising tide and the Absecon Boulevard Bridge that was closed that we needed to get under… it was already blowing 25-30 knots and the current was raging against us so best we could do was 5 knots… cleared the railroad bridge no problems… one more to go and we had our fingers crossed that the tide had not risen enough so that we would be able to get under the bridge. We arrived and I slowed to crawl as Susan went on the top deck to check our clearance… she came back in and said we had it by a few inches… luck was with us today for the bridge.

We continued north and watched the winds increase to a steady 30 knots gusting to 35 knots… the winds were healing us over about 10 degrees and the current was really strong… making 2.5-3.0 knots at best… slow slow slower… finally we made it back to the basin where the city dock is located… what did we find but a large sailing vessel docked what appeared to be in the middle of the dock… as we got closer I could see that there was enough room for us to dock behind him… we would not be fully along side the floating dock but we would be on enough to safely secure the boat.

The only problem we had now was the winds were out of the NE now and that was causing them to blow us away from the dock as I approached… made several attempts to get close enough for Susan to snag a cleat with a line… but each and every time we got next to dock the wind would gust and the stern would swing away from the dock too far for Susan to grab a cleat… then we noticed a man out on the dock… he had come out from the restaurant to assist us… thankfully, with his assistance we were able to get a line on the dock… once a single line is on your home free from there… at least that is what I thought… the winds at 30 knots plus were making it difficult to get the remaining lines on… not difficult but it took some time to get things secured but we finally were securely docked at 0945 hours… added several extra lines for the high winds... Will wait out the storm here at a safe dock... :)



We traveled the today for 2 covering 5.53 nautical miles and averaging 4.14 knots.

Trip totals to date:

Distance: 269.16 nautical miles
Hours: 44 hours 51 minutes
Avg Spd: 6.0 knots