Sunday, June 18, 2019

Our first day on the Atlantic Ocean began with a bit of rock and rolling. Our route has us 4 to 5 miles offshore to stay clear of shallow water hazards in the area. The seas are running with 1 to 2 foot swells from the southeast with a 6 second period.  Not bad for the ocean, but Bo was not overly happy with it while he tried to sit next to/on top of Sue. He was no longer hiding from what he doesn’t like, so that’s an improvement! Sadly, we learned early in the day that our new head, recently installed, would not flush – uh oh! Why will our head problems not go away? Grrrrr! There was nothing to be done until we got into port somewhere, so again we were fortunate to have a 2nd head.

We saw the coolest thing as we were traveling past the NJ shoreline. It was a school of fish swarming around (like a giant flock of birds, but in the water) causing a dark and bumpy, yet sparkly, area in the water. (See photo – which does not do it justice, of course!) We can only assume that there was something bigger down below that was chasing (feeding on) the school of fish. We’ve seen films similar to this sort of thing on Discovery or NatGeo channels displaying the sight from below the waterline, but it was so interesting to see it from up above!

Four and a half hours after leaving Cape May, we arrived at Farley State Marina in Atlantic City, NJ at 1:15pm. Yes – it was that Atlantic City, the one known for gambling, casinos, and its boardwalk. We hadn’t realized that this state marina was attached to the Golden Nugget hotel and casino. Not that it really mattered, but we were a little surprised that we had to sign-in at the hotel’s marina check-in desk.  

With a lot of afternoon time left, Brian worked on the head until 6pm only to conclude that a hose was blocked (old hose clogged or falling apart inside to cause blockage) and needed to be replaced. Ugh! Now we have to find the hose (not at an Atlantic City casino), then to do the work to replace it – Yuck! Since the forward head is available, and nothing could be done now, we cleaned up and went to dinner at The Deck – the outdoor restaurant on the marina side of the casino/hotel. We’d spent the last hour or so listening to a barely so-so band playing there (easily heard throughout the marina), so we hoped that the next band would be better while we ate dinner there. Pleasantly surprised, we listened to the Hawkins Cove band perform many, many old favorites! After a good meal, we made it back to the boat just before it started to rain and listened to the band’s last set while relaxing on the flybridge.

The rain stopped, Brian took Bo for a walk, and we all went to bed planning on an early departure in the morning for another day on the ocean.