Bay Head NJ (2014-04-27)

N40° 03.929', W74° 02.941'

Tonight finds us at anchor in Bay Head NJ, at the northern end of the Jersey ICW.

Saturday morning we raised anchor and headed over to the Farley Marina and tied up at their courtesy dock.  We had the same tide timings as on Friday, so we decided that instead of stopping midday to wait for the tide to swing we'd take care of laundry and a couple errands in the morning and then continue on in the afternoon on the rising tide.  We made a quick stop in the Golden Nugget casino as well, but this time we resisted the siren call of the slot machines and just had lunch.

Farley Marina courtesy dock

Crunchy dock...

By 1500 we cast off from the dock and headed up the Jersey ICW.  There were a few more tricky spots that we were lucky to have the tide with us as we passed them.  If we had tried to pass through at low tide we probably would have been well and truly stuck in the mud.

By 1800 we had made it to Beach Haven, and as far as we were going to go for the day.  We had looked at a couple spots on the way, but neither spot worked for us as feasible anchorages.  We ended up with a rather exposed spot on the eastern side of Little Egg Harbour.  The winds last night were forecast to be strong from the northwest, so we ended up with a pretty bumpy night.

Sunset on Little Egg Harbour

This morning dawned clear and sunny, but still quite windy.  We raised the anchor and started off on our last day on the Jersey ICW.  With the wind blowing from out of the north we had quite a chop through most of the day.  We were happy to get to the Metedeconk River and the shelter of the northern shore.  We had a few potential anchorages that we wanted to check out, the first of which was a spot in Bay Head, near the end of the Point Pleasant Canal, which leads to the Manasquan River and the inlet.  It was a perfect spot, with good shelter, inside a no-wake zone (not that that ever seems to matter :-)) and close to the inlet.  By 1400 we had the hook down and set.

Now begins the wait for a weather window.  This is as far as we can go on the inside in New Jersey.  The next part of our journey has to be out on the Atlantic once again, up and around Sandy Hook and then into New York Harbour.  There's a chance we'll have a weather window to make the hop tomorrow, before the big weather system that is approaching hits later in the week.  We're hoping it will work out, because if not we'll probably be waiting until the end of the week before the next weather window.