S/V Geru: The Atlantic

On Sunday, November 4th, we dropped Al off at the dock of the 79th Street Marina and pointed our bows towards the Atlantic Ocean. We had expected a fair bit of traffic on the water as we passed through the main New York harbour, but, because it was Sunday, there were only a few ferries, freighters and pleasure boats. The only excitement we had leaving the harbour was under the Narrows Bridge where we had a police escort while multiple helicopters flew overhead. Traffic also seemed to be stopped on the bridge; we assume this was all due to the New York Marathon which was on that day, but we're not sure.

As we passed through the Lower Bay towards Sandy Hook we encountered very choppy wavy water and even saw some breakers over a shallow shoal. Surprisingly, as we rounded Sandy Hook and were officially out in the Atlantic, the waves calmed down quite a bit and we had a comfortable trip down the shore to Manasquan Inlet. The shoreline consists of one long beach and only has a few inlets connecting into inland waters. We actually saw some surfers in wetsuits riding the cold Atlantic waves on the beach in Manasquan.

Manasquan is a small quaint town. We stayed there for three days waiting out yet another storm. We were awakened one night by a loud banging noise on deck only to discover in the morning that a sea gull had used our boat as a chopping board to dismantle a crab! There were bits of crab shell all over the deck. Another gull tried to do the same thing another day with a starfish.

We left Manasquan on Wednesday and motored to Atlantic City. We saw the glittering casinos from afar, but we wanted to get farther south so we left early the next morning (while we still had good weather) and made it to Cape May.

New York