Barnegat Inlet

Traveling from Glimmer Glass to Barnegat was quite the adventure. We learned some things, to say the least. Again, those waves in the Atlantic Ocean are running from 3 to 5 feet. They are a bit like a roller coaster. We travel at about 16knts, and our boat is built to travel through pretty decent conditions. On this day, with 10 to 15 knts at our back in this 3 to 5 roll, we decided to make a stop and test a system that needed testing. Within minutes we learned why you never never never stop in these conditions. Our boat started swinging around wildly and from side to side. Things went flying. Dogs went running. Where do you go for safety in these conditions? Dave quickly ran back upstairs and started the engines. Well, he started one engine. The other was taking a break apparently. After cleaning up, I joined him upstairs a little freaked out about one engine. Dave was flummoxed, shrugged and tried starting it again. It just started. The boat has a mind of it's own. Maybe it was telling us it was mad at us for stopping at all.

We had smooth cruising after that until we hit Barnegat Bay. And by "hit" I mean literally hit. Sure enough, the warnings of shallow NJ ICW came back to haunt us and we ran aground. We do feel like it was bit unfair, in that our depth gauge was telling us we had clearance, but I think both Dave and I can admit there were some other things we might have missed and could have avoided this little delay in our day as we waited for the tide to rise and release our landed boat.

So, lessons learned this day. At the end of the day no one was hurt, nothing got broken (except maybe some pride) and we hopefully learned things for future.

What Could Go Right? The day ended with a visit from Kristi and Briese. They are really an amazing couple. We could talk to them for days. They are so interesting and lead such interesting lives. They drove an hour and a half to have dinner and see What Could Go Wrong?. It was a pleasure.

What Could Go Wrong? Well, I think I covered enough there today.

Favorite part of the day: For sure hearing Kristi and Briese's stories.

We apologize for the pictures. We were a little distracted!Read more