Cape May to Atlantic City, anchor

OMG I'm exhausted. This was one of the most stressing days I've had on the water.

Early on Russ realized some bridges may not open due to the high winds. He called Sea Tow, asking for some local knowledge. They told us it was skinny but, if you stay in the channel, we'd be fine. So, we ventured out.

The winds were 25 to 40 knots most of the day (bad thing). But since it came from the east it blew in about 3 feet of water, which created more depth on this very skinny piece of waterway (good thing!).

A good portion of the day was marshy,
much like Georgia or the Carolinas.

The wind did not create huge waves given it's intensity (good thing) but made standing station and correcting "navigational issues" fairly difficult (bad thing!).

Hm. "Navigational issues." Care to explain, Jax?

Typically we use Navionics to make us a route. We may or may not follow it depending on what we know about the waterway (like Bob's route says to hug that red, for example). It was a constant struggle to get Navionics to plot us a route at all. It seriously hated the JICW. We'd plot a waypoint 1 mile out, it would chart a way. We'd add another 1 mile from that, it would chart a way. Add one more... nope! OUTSIDE YOU GO! We plotted a path in small increments, swapping between our tablet and 2 phones to have just some idea of where we needed to go.

Most of the day I followed the sail line on AquaMaps while eyeing the sonar depth on Navionics (which, by the way, Navionics doesn't use, otherwise it would be happy plot me a path). Every now and again we'd have to slow or stop while we double check our position, the sail line, and where the channel was supposed to be. All while being blown out of whatever channel we had. 

Once we backed up, changing our minds. 

Wait! The channel goes to the right!!

Once we "had a discussion" about weather to follow the sail line or the channel markers. 

I really hate it with the sailing line and the channel
do not agree on where to go.

Once we hailed High Tide behind us, "We think we missed the turn and the inlet looks rough." "Would the inlet be faster?" "Yep." "We're good for that!" So we did that.

Going through the inlet reaffirmed why we were doing 
THIS and not THAT!

The shallowest we had was under 2 feet. That only lasted 10 yards. More importantly, it was also very thin, with channels (and bridge openings) not much wider than our boat.

Near AC there were lots of channels between
neighborhoods, and bridges that needed to be
negotiated.

For future boaters, the Navionics sonar was very accurate. That was encouraging.

Needless to say the level of concentration we used today made it exhausting.

Oh, I almost forgot. The starboard engine worked just fine!

Finally! Atlantic City!