Offshore to Atlantic Highlands, NJ

Offshore to Atlantic Highlands, NJ

Monday 7th – Tuesday 8th June 2021

We had planned to leave Cape May on Tuesday, but as the weather forecast evolved we decided to bring forward our departure and avoid the possibility of running into thunderstorms that are expected mid-week. 

We pulled up the anchor at 10 am yesterday, raised our mainsail in the channel and motored out into the Atlantic Ocean. The conditions were quite pleasant and certainly a lot milder than when we arrived on Saturday. Initially the winds were too light to just sail (6-10 knots off our starboard quarter), but after two hours they had filled in to 12-15 knots and we had six hours of fabulous broad reach sailing. We were keen to get more practice with our Wind-Pilot self-steering equipment and it worked out well. From talking to others it seems like adjusting your sails so the boat is well balanced is real key to success. Interestingly we met a man on the dock next to us in Yankee Point marina who told us he almost ended up being the US business representative for the Wind-Pilot system. I’m not sure why it didn’t pan out, but he did say he thought it was an excellent system ... just what you would expect from German engineering … our friend Gunther would be proud! Yesterday we used it for about four hours and once we had the mainsail and genoa balanced the only adjustments we made were re-set our course to more northerly direction to parallel the coast. 

Unfortunately, the gradual trend to the north resulted in us sailing almost dead down wind, which is never the greatest. As the sun dropped towards the horizon the winds also eased off and with the genoa blanketed by the mainsail it wasn’t doing much and our speed kept dropping. I tried to get our spinnaker pole out so we could sail wing-on-wing but I was struggling up on the foredeck in the bouncy seas and with darkness approaching we decided to go back to motor-sailing with just the mainsail. It felt surprisingly cool out on the water even though it was a clear sunny day and during the night it became a little foggy, but not too terrible. Gloria and I switched off with 2-hour watches from 8pm onwards and the in the early hours of the morning we rounded Sandy Hook and headed into the Atlantic Highlands harbor. We dropped hook at 4 am in a location selected solely on instruments (chart plotter and radar) We covered a little over 110 nautical miles in 18 hour and we were both tired and headed straight to bed for a few hours of sleep. 

This passage is probably our last overnight / offshore passage for this trip. From here we cross New York Bay, head up the East river by Manhattan and then cruise up Long Island Sound. Our aim is to be back in East Greenwich in about 2 weeks time.

Mike

40 25.004 N, 74 01.302 W

Sunset over New jersey (wide angle lens)

Sunset over New jersey (tele photo lens)

Gloria checking the chart-plotter and radar in the cockpit

Motor-sailing northwards along the New Jersey coast. Note the new position for our life raft. We like it better here because it frees up space behind the cockpit. In the future I plan to build a dedicated cradle in this position and that will ensure the hand rail is also free.

The bow of the boat with the red green running lights clearly visible

Looking back down the deck with Gloria at the helm. 

Motor sailing off the New Jersey Coast (note: There is no soundtrack as I turned off the microphone to avoid wind noise)

ditto