EIDER 03-27-18

Latitude/Longitude: N39°22.831' / W074°25.188'

Atlantic City anchorage

 The bridge that wouldn’t open

I always think we are going to hit

We woke up this morning still securely tied to someone’s dock. Looked like it belonged to Inlet Social and Athletic Club and not much of either of those activities happening.  Not that this gave us the right to tie up but we were desperate and usually one boater will always help another. We called the bridge referred to in the last post only to find out after calls to other bridges that they are not opening at all until April 1 unless you give a four hour notice. Well in four hours it would be dead low tide and we can fit under with the extra height provided by low tide. Problem was we would then be facing one of the worst sections of the NJICW at dead low.  STRESS and mud. So we waited until we could slide under the bridge and went to plan C. We went around the corner, anchored near the inlet and we will go out to sea tomorrow up to NYC harbor. No more shallow water and weather report looks good. Earlier today with the binoculars I could see someone surfing in the waves that break near all of these inlets - seriously.  Much less surf right now. A good sign. 

Susan Meyer

4 hrs ·

Although our adventures in boating are tamer these days they still occur. As you know, we missed the last bridge of the day and anchored just off the channel. Well we did notice that we were very slowly drifting around in very soft mud until we looked out , dark of course, and could see we were close to a big mud bank now visible at dead low tide. We figured by morning we might well DRIFT under said bridge. So we re-anchored kind of IN the channel and put on our deck lights to be more visible. No boats anyway. Holding was worse and driving more apparent. So we gave up, pulled the anchor and sashayed over to tie up to the pilings on this “nobody is using it now” dock and finally went to bed at midnight.