In the North Atlantic - Manasquan to Sandy Hook

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's) 

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 65 - June 4, 2017

When the Clarks picked us up at Brewer Crystal River Marina on Friday, we were not really sure when we were going to make the run in the ocean to New York. I had received some great advice on the AGLCA forum on go / no-go criteria for the ocean run. Our friend Roger Bumgarner suggested Sunday looked perfect.  As we continually looked at conditions, we knew on Saturday morning that Sunday would in fact be our day for the ocean crossing!

We use the Marine Weather app on the iPad and the tide/current tool in Navionics. Marine Weather tells us wind speed and direction and wave height and period. Our criteria for go / no-go, which are very conservative, are winds less than 15 knots and a wave period at least twice the wave height. According to Marine Weather, today we would have 5 knot winds from the southeast, and waves of 2 feet or less with a dominant period of 7 seconds, which certainly met our criteria. 

Our second consideration was exiting Manasquan Inlet into the ocean. Our criterion here was at or near slack tide. A strong current, either ebb or flood, would complicate the exit to the ocean. According to Navionics, the slack on Sunday would occur very close to 11:00 a.m.  The distance in the ocean from Manasquan to Sandy Hook is about 25 miles, with perhaps five more miles to go around the tip of Sandy Hook and down to our anchorage, so an 11:00 a.m. departure would still give us plenty of time to get to Sandy Hook in the mid-afternoon, even at our slow cruising speed.

So we set our iPhone alarm for 6 a.m. for this morning, with a planned departure of 8:00 a.m. AIS (as fans of Raymond know, AIS is "ass in seat"!). We would need some time to get ready for departure, untie the lines from the damned pilings, fuel up at the fuel dock, and travel the two miles from the marina to the inlet (or outlet, in this case, but they are called "inlets" on charts). The Clarks got us to the marina a bit early, and we said our goodbyes and thank-yous for their wonderful hospitality!

Daydream untied from pilings

Todd the dockmaster came down and untied our lines from the pilings. How he got the lines off the pilings I don't know, I meant to watch but I was busy with the guys at the stern getting our lines tied there.  Todd obviously has had a lot of practice, because it only took him a couple of minutes. We re-tied Daydream with the bow and stern lines until we were ready to go. You can see from the photo how far it is both forward and to the sides to the pilings.  

We motored around to the fuel dock, which is unlike any other we have encountered on the Loop - it is a self-service fuel dock. After fueling, we followed the channel in Manasquan Harbor to the Manasquan Inlet, passing the canal from the ICW where we had entered Manasquan Harbor along the way. We got to the Inlet a few minutes after 11:00 a.m., and had an easy exit to the ocean! 

Jersey Shore from a mile out in the ocean

I won't say the ocean was "like a lake," because it wasn't, but it was also not uncomfortable at all. In fact, I wish we could have do-overs on the Albemarle Sound crossing, the Day from Hell on the Chesapeake, and the Delaware Bay from the Cohansey River to Cape May run so we could apply our newly acquired knowledge for go / no-go decisions to those days! We ran about a mile out in the ocean, and conditions really could not have been better. We ran at 8-9 statute miles per hour. It took us four and a half hours from the time we got out into the ocean at the Manasquan Inlet until we had our hook set inside Sandy Hook.

Screenshot of Active Captain description of
Horseshoe Cove at Sandy Hook

Screenshot of Horseshoe Cove anchroage

We use Active Captain to get information about potential anchorages, and we liked the entry for Horseshoe Cove inside Sandy Hook. It is directly opposite the beach at the Sandy Hook National Seashore.

 We anchored in about 14 feet, which was still reasonably close to the beach. The red triangle on the screenshot represents the position of our boat. We had some rocking from passing ferries early in the afternoon but by evening, the ferries had stopped running, and we had very calm conditions and a peaceful evening!