During the rest of the summer, Cindy and I enjoyed numerous cruises to destinations scattered throughout L.I. Sound. We visited Northport again, this time with our nephew, William, aboard and we had an absolute blast having him all to ourselves for an overnight jaunt. We again hung on a mooring from Seymours and made good use of their launch. William spent a good amount of time on the flybridge, eating, relaxing, listening to his iPod and helping me navigate. But mostly eating.
Port Washington in Manhasset Bay turned out to be a favorite destination of ours. The free town moorings are plentiful and easy to pick up, the town has a dingy dock, and the harbor master is very nice guy. Also, we spent time at the Calf Islands, a short jump across the Sound from our slip in Sea Cliff, as both a lunch spot one day and an overnight anchorage another time. Our reviews of these places and the other places we visited are all listed in Active Captain.
We finished up our “leisure-type” cruising at the end of August with a second trip out east to Shelter Island. This time we had my brother, sister-in-law and nephew aboard. It was an incredible four days of fun and relaxation as we visited some of the same places that Cindy and I had enjoyed earlier in the season. Here’s my brother’s happy family getting ready for a few days of “roughing it”.
While on this cruise, Cindy and I again visited the beach at West Neck Harbor and took one of our favorite pictures of LIMERICK. It really captures what we loved most about our cruising this summer.
After this cruise, Cindy and I headed back to Carolina for a couple of weeks to take care of things on the home front. We returned to NY mid-September and got the boat ready for the trip south to VA for the winter.
A sad goodbye and an “eventful” night
It was really tough to leave our slip in Glen Cove that last time, realizing that our summer fun had come to a close. Our departure was timed to coincide with a good weather window to travel down the NJ coast the following day and the first night we planned to anchor at Atlantic Highlands near Sandy Hook, NJ, which is just south of NY harbor. We enjoyed a nice ride down the East River, past the Statue of Liberty and under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. When we arrived at the anchorage, it was filled with boats of all description, all waiting for the same weather window to travel south the next day in the Atlantic Ocean off the NJ coast. Not finding any room in this spot, we selected another anchorage close by called Horseshoe Cove.
Through the afternoon we listened to the radio forecast, as the weather was deteriorating a bit and we could tell that we may be in for a thunderstorm or two. We let out more anchor chain for safety and made sure that everything was secured properly on the boat. The forecast called for rain beginning around 9:30 pm, but at 8:30 all hell broke loose! Within a matter of 30 seconds we were experiencing steady 40 knot winds with gusts over 60 knots (near 70 mph!), and blinding rain. The wind was pushing water into our cove and creating waves of 4-5 ft., and the sky was ablaze with huge streaks of lightning, creating a surreal visual spectacle. I immediately started the engine (to ensure that, if needed, it would be ready), and we donned our life jackets. We watched the RADAR closely, keeping an eye on our position at all times. In all my years of boating I have never seen anything quite like it.
About three-quarters of an hour later the winds started to abate and the rain slackened enough for us to be able to see the bow from the pilothouse windows. The lightning continued to streak all around us until midnight as the storms moved away to the Northeast. During and after the storms we heard lots of chatter on the VHF radio about other boats dragging and bumping in various area anchorages. Throughout it all we never moved an inch, as the Rocna anchor did its job and held us securely. (When we first bought the boat, the very first item we invested in was a much larger, higher quality anchor (the Rocna). On this night, it paid for itself 100 times over.)
Atlantic City antics
The next morning we left the anchorage at 5am as we had an eleven hour day planned and wanted to arrive at the anchorage in Atlantic City during daylight hours. We had a pleasant cruise down the coast and arrived at the Atlantic City inlet around 3:30pm. We had been here before and we knew that the channel to the anchorage was very narrow, and in spots, very shallow. So after passing the inlet we approached the channel slowly. The boat was being pushed sideways by the fast flowing current, but we made it safely through the channel entrance. We did notice that there were a number of swimmers in the water very close to the side of the channel, so we were using extra caution to make certain we didn’t get too close to them.
Suddenly, Cindy remarks, “I think those women are topless”. Now, that being the very last sentence I expected to hear Cindy say at that time and place, I asked her to repeat herself.
‘I think those women are topless”, she repeated.
“What women?”, I asked.
“The ones swimming right in front of us”.
Sure enough, adding to the already high anxiety approach to the anchorage, there were now three young ladies in the water “sans-suits”. (Sensing that these women could possibly become involved in future criminal activity, I spent several moments carefully taking in the scene so as to be able to give the police a very accurate description. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.) As we closely passed them, we discovered that they were bottomless, too.
Cindy then says, “Hey, keep your eyes on the channel!”
I said, “What channel?”
Here we are, in a situation requiring my full attention, and there are naked women literally several feet from the boat, yelling to get my attention. (Not sure why they were yelling, as they already had my attention.) Anyway, I managed to keep water under Limerick’s keel and we made our way into the anchorage. By the time I had the anchor down, the lovely welcoming committee had departed. I am sure of this as I spent quite a bit of time looking for them with the binoculars.
Beautiful Cape May
The next morning we awoke to thick fog, totally obscuring the channel exit. We could have used our RADAR and our depthsounder to slowly make our way out of the anchorage, but we had a relatively short run to Cape May that day, so we decided to just wait for some of the fog to lift. An hour later we made our way out the narrow channel, into the Absecon River and out the inlet to the Atlantic Ocean.
Heading south, the fog returned and we paid close attention to our RADAR screen, and also watched and listened carefully for other boats. We enjoyed a nice trip and were entertained as we watched the water boil all around us for miles on end as enormous schools of fish played out the never-ending drama of predators and prey.
By early afternoon we were safely tied to the pier at Miss Chris Marina in Cape May. Docking was a bit challenging, as there was another boat already tied to the opposite pier, but we took our time, “thought thin” and squeezed our way to our spot.
After attaching to the shoreside electric panel and double-checking our lines, we got on our bicycles and made our way towards the beach. And what a beach it was!
Cindy and I are beach-hounds, and Cape May beach was beautiful. The beach is very deep and wide, with room for many hundreds of people. The sand was clean, the waves were high and the wind was delightfully cooling. Additionally, this is one of the few beaches we have ever come across that has public rest rooms and outdoor showers. The beach was spotless, and everyone was enjoying themselves immensely. What a great find. We will definitely be back.
Next time- a beautiful anchorage and a tropical storm. Stay tuned!
Limerick's Blog 