Shallow Water

Hello from Atlantic City!

Yesterday we broke free of the NYC area, leaving Atlantic Highlands / Sandy Hook at first light and hugging the NJ shore (1,000 - 2,000 ft. off the beach) as we headed south. We had calm conditions (except for the wakes from a thousand fisherman heading out) until 11 am when we reached the Manasquan inlet. We didn't turn in but continued to the next major inlet at Barnegat. A SSE wind kicked up and added some chop off the port bow, and we were glad to finally turn into the inlet.

While our timing with the winds/waves was OK, our timing with tides was poor as we had to fight 3 knot opposing currents and standing waves as we plowed into the inlet. Eventually we worked our way inside to a protected cove and dropped anchor in time to explore the resort town of Barnegat some, and of course empty the dogs.

Today we awoke to strong NW winds so we took the 'inside route' towards Atlantic City. This serpentine route takes a 30 mile straight line route and stretches it to 40 miles, and snakes us through Barnegat Bay, which is 10 miles wide and 2 feet deep. Since Spray needs 4 ft. of water we need to carefully stay in the channels that comprise the NJICW.

Apparently New Jersey has done some recent dredging, so most of the channels were OK, with 6-7 ft. depths. The problem areas are at inlets, where fast tidal currents redistribute sediments to cause shoal areas faster than any dredging program can keep up. In fact the charts usually don't show channel marker locations at inlets, as the Coast Guard is constantly moving and adding channel markers as needed.

At mid-day today we passed the Little Egg Harbor inlet which exhibited these shoaling issues, and we were following another power boat 'Splendor', which is helpful as you assume they will impact any shoaling first and thus warn you. In one section where we were warned of shoaling, we could see where the Coast Guard had added a couple of extra small channel markers to reroute traffic around shallow sections. One such marker looked squarish shaped, so we assumed it was a green marker which we would keep to the right of, and sure enough, 'Splendor' did just that. But Sheila is looking through the binoculars and announces that the new marker is red, so we veer to the left of it and we find 6+ ft. of depth there.

All seems OK until a few minutes later when 'Splendor' makes a quick U-turn and heads back past us. We exchange some garbled radio communication that leaves us confused as to what happened. Our first guess is that they saw numbers on their depth finder that scared them enough to abort travel, so we slow to a near stop and carefully watch our depth finder, but depths were OK as we crawl ahead.

The mystery was soon solved when we heard 'Splendor' radio the Coast Guard announcing that they had just sheared a propellor shaft and were taking on some seawater. Apparently passing to the right of that red marker was a bad idea and we were lucky not to blindly follow them. Fortunately their leak was small enough for bilge pumps to handle and they were headed to a nearby boatyard for repairs.

So off we snaked through more channels until reaching our present anchorage near Atlantic City. Now that we have had our taste of the NJICW, and the winds are diminished, we're planning on heading outside for tomorrow's run to Cape May. Stay tuned!

 

 

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