I eased out of the Port Washington mooring basin about 0615, with a fully rinsed off vessel from the night's rain. It was still raining lightly as I fell in with a lot of commercial traffic that was timing their passage, as was I, for the slack at Hell Gate.
We rode the current out the East River, past Manhattan, under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, through the Swash Channel, and out at Sandy Hook. At times the rain reduced the visibility under a mile.
There were periodic weather warnings for high winds with the rain in the early morning, but by the time I was headed out Sandy Hook, the only warnings were flood advisories.
By afternoon, I entered the Manasquan inlet, about an hour and a half before slack current. The inlets along the NJ coast, can be dangerous as the current falls into any easterly sea, and are better timed if you can enter with the current. The swells had enough of a northerly component that I could angle down sea and then duck behind the jetty, and was glad to be out of the Atlantic again. I had chosen not to continue south along the outside, though shorter, because of the ominous waves of rain in front of me, and I would have been at the Barnegat Inlet at the max ebb. There was another 50-ish foot trawler, who had overtaken me a little before the inlet, who continued south along the coast. I wondered how far we went, and how rough his ride was going to be in the increasing afternoon winds.
I went through the Manasquan Inlet, against the max current at the Point Pleasant Canal, and down the inside as far as Tom's River. I saw two other boats underway in the rain. I was glad to be in the calm, inside waters! By the time I got to Tom's River, with the billowing clouds to the south, I decided to go drop the hook.
As I was going in, I heard a single engine plane had just gone down to the south, just off Atlantic City. I was hoping there were boats nearby to help.
I anchored off Money Island in Tom's River.72.6 nm today
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