Meet me tonight in Atlantic City

We are underway northbound in the Atlantic Ocean after five nights in Atlantic City, New Jersey. That's an unusually long stay for us, but in addition to waiting on good passage weather, we also had a number of errands we needed to handle there.

Wednesday afternoon we had an early arrival, right around 1:30, and we picked a nice spot to drop the hook right off the Coast Guard station (map). That's about as close as we can get to the two places we can land the dinghy, and with so many errands I wanted to try to keep the rides short.

We just barely beat this thunderstorm after parking the car Thursday night. The "golf ball" atop the Ocean Casino is in the clouds.

A big storm with plenty of rain and high winds was forecast for dinner time, so we put out extra scope and left the tender on deck.  We thought we could make it ashore for dinner, but then we might well be stuck there until the storm passed, with Vector fending for herself in the anchorage. We opted instead to eat aboard.

Of course that meant the storm was a complete dud. We got very little wind and almost no rain, and after dinner it was clear skies and pleasant. I splashed the tender and headed ashore stag to get a walk in, and also get the lay of the land after an absence of a year. The very first change: our secret dinghy spot at the marina is now occupied by a PWC float and I had to find a different spot.

We tucked the dink into this notch behind a superyacht.

I checked in with the marina for the dinghy landing and got the gate code to get back on the dock before setting out on my walk. First stop: the county bus stop in front of the casino, in the event I might need to take the bus out to Brigantine to get our mail and packages. I ended my walk with a loop through the casino, where I noted that what used to be an Italian venue, The Grotto, mid-casino, is now the Mexican-themed Dos Caminos. The other half dozen dining venues were unchanged.

The anchorage was comfortable, but sometime after dark, loud music started up from the parking lot on the point adjacent to Gardner's Basin. We had forgotten about this but were now reminded, and our memory was that this pop-up party can go well into the wee hours. We weighed anchor and moved down closer to the bridge (map), a quarter mile farther from the music.

Bus stop. This will get you to Brigantine but is also the easiest way to get to the Borgata right across the highway.

That was a lot quieter, but just before bed time the Atlantic swell clocked around to the exact direction to come rolling down the inlet between the jetties, and we rolled the rest of the night. It was too late, really, to relocate, and Louise had to sleep cross-ways across the short dimension of the bed to get any shut-eye. In hindsight, we should have weighed, gone through the bridge, and dropped the hook in front of Harrah's.

Things started to flatten our with the turn of the tide Thursday morning, and we moved about halfway back to split the difference between too loud and too rolly (map). Almost as soon as we had the hook down, we got the notice that our mail had arrived at the UPS Access Pint in the CVS in Brigantine. The timing was wrong to take the bus, and so I called Seatow, across the street from the CVS and who has a few slips out back, to see if they would let me tie up for a few minutes. They were very pleasant and agreed to let me squeeze in.

They had me tie to this skiff to get to the dock.

Between the barrier islands and the mainland in this part of NJ is a lot of wetland, crisscrossed by myriad channels, some natural and some not, and the ones that run alongside land are chock-a-block with docks. Seatow is on one of these called the Golden Hammock Thorofare, which is completely unmarked. It is reached from Absecon inlet via the also-unmarked Little Panama Slough. I was navigating by chart alone when I was passed by a local, whom I then followed the rest of the way. They knew where the also unmarked no-wake zone started.

Seatow had me tie up to a skiff at the dock and it took less than five minutes to grab our package and leave. I walked past the "Brigantine Lighthouse" on my way back, just to snap a photo. This was never a real lighthouse, having been built here in the 1920s by a real estate developer just to attract business. It has become the icon of the town. I was back at Vector just a bit late for lunch.

1926 Brigantine "lighthouse," a marketing ploy for a real estate developer.

Chief among our motivations for extra time here was the need for a follow-up visit to my parents, about an hour north. They're actually right next to the Manasquan Inlet, but there is no place for us to anchor there, and a marina stay is $300 per night. By contrast a rental car (which we'd likely still need there anyway) is $60 a day, so it was a no-brainer to make the trip from here. We tendered over to the casino at 4 and Enterprise came and got us around 20 minutes later.

After picking up what turned out to be a pregnant roller skate of a car, we checked out the nearby Atlantic City Rail Line station as an option to get home after our after-hours return, and then thought about having dinner right there in Absecon on the mainland. But it was really too early for dinner, and we were concerned that we lad left Vector alone at anchor before having been through a full turn of the tide. We decided to find dinner in Brigantine, which would give us a reassuring view of the anchorage from the bridge.

Diminutive rental car. It was easy on the gas, at least.

That turned out to be a snare and a delusion. We drove around Brigantine for 20 minutes but could not come up with a place that was open for dinner, served beer, and was not a dump. Maybe the mob still controls the liquor licenses here. We decided to go someplace in AC instead, and the first place suggested by Google was our old friend the Back Bay Ale House, which is at Gardner's Basin. We've only ever been there in the dinghy, so it was interesting to drive around the Monopoly board to get there. After dinner we stashed the car in the free casino garage.

When I had booked the car my plan had been to pick it up Thursday at closing time, drive to Brick on Friday, and then return the car sometime on Saturday at our leisure. But by the time we picked it up, my cousin and uncle had also decided to drive down from New York on Saturday, and we changed our plan to arrive together with them. That gave us all day Friday for errands with the car.

Too sunny outside so we ate in the bar at Back Bay Ale House.

Among the things in the mail we had received was the legal paperwork for my "ordination" to officiate our niece's wedding next year. So I spent some time Friday morning filling out the paperwork for Douglas County and making an appointment with a notary. The UPS Store in Egg Harbor had an appointment available at 1:30.

Again around 10:30 we got notice that both my Amazon order and the replacement Spurs parts  I had ordered from Fort Lauderdale had arrived at the CVS in Brigantine, and so after lunch we headed out on our expedition, stopping first at the CVS and then heading directly to Walmart in Mays Landing. On the way we passed the Sams Club, where I posted the very first travel post to this blog a little more than two decades ago. It's been quite the ride.

Notarized NV affidavit and signed letter of good standing from my "church."

With the luxury of a car, we loaded up with a five-gallon pail of motor oil, printer paper, and dry goods. We omitted the fresh veggies and cold stuff until after our other stops. We arrived to UPS right on time for my notary appointment, figuring to head from there just a few miles up the road for Louise to get her hair cut at Supercuts. But we found a Great Clips right in the same shopping plaza as UPS.

Also in that plaza was a Lidl grocery, a first for me, so after her haircut we finished up the shopping. They had a very nice fresh bakery section and we picked up a couple of bagels as well. We returned home the long way, via US-40, so we could drive "the strip," Atlantic Avenue, past all the boardwalk casinos. The whole strip is looking quite shop-worn. The glitz that never really was has faded, lots of places are shuttered, and even the gritty Springsteen song no longer seems to fit.

We used our folding wagon to get our loot from the garage back to the tender, and after just an hour or so back home, we turned right around to come back for dinner. I found Bocca, a well-rated coal-fired pizza place with draft beer down in Margate, and we drove down there via Baltic and Ventnor. Of course that took us past Marven Gardens, which was misspelled on the Monopoly board (it's a portmanteau of Margate and Ventnor, on whose borders it sits). The further you get from AC the more upscale things become, and Ventnor and Margate both had a nicer selection of eateries than the city, apart from the casinos themselves.

I knew where the no wake zone in the Thorofare was by following a local. This guy was not so lucky.

The entirety of Saturday was given over to our trip to Brick. Our car had no EZPass transponder, so we ended up going through the cash lanes on the Parkway. Thankfully we asked at the very first toll booth -- the Enterprise clerk had told us to just go through the transponder lanes regardless and we'd be billed later. The toll taker confirmed what I already thought I knew -- NJ does not have pay-by-plate. 

I had figured to take the train back to AC after dropping the car off at the 5:30 due time, but we had it gassed up and parked by 4:30. We didn't want to wait for the 5:45 train, so we ended up grabbing a Lyft. That also aced us out of the brew pub near the train station, and we ended up eating at The Deck, adjacent to the marina. It was a great night to eat outdoors, before the current heat wave hit, and we thankfully finished before the pervasive live music started.

We might well have decided to leave first thing yesterday morning, except that as soon as I had the Spurs parts in hand, I had texted Shawn to see if he was available to install them. He agreed to meet us at the dock on Sunday, and that sealed the deal on staying until this morning. Farley State Marina has a very generous day-use policy, and we weighed anchor yesterday and headed over, asking for a couple of hours. They put us in a slip with just a few inches under our keel (map).

Vic & Anthony's steakhouse in the casino has stratospheric prices. But if you know about it, there is this unadvertised bar menu and even better happy hour menu in the bar if you can find a seat.

Shawn arrived with his wife and his own stepladder to get back out of the water on these ladderless docks. Once he was in the water it was a ten minute job, and I think he was really happy to wrap up what he saw as unfinished business from the little mishap in Cape May. I am happy to report that the new piece, with damper plugs properly installed, is not rattling.

After the dive work and taking on a little water we returned to the anchorage (map). We came back via tender at dinner time, venturing in to the bowels of the casino to try Dos Caminos, which was actually quite good. On a Sunday night the casino was not busy enough for cigarette smoke, which somehow does not respect the restaurant boundary, to be much of a problem. We decked the tender as soon as we returned home.

This morning we weighed anchor shortly after the start of the ebb. Conditions have been excellent, and we are just approaching Barnegat Light as I wrap up typing. I am maintaining a careful watch for a dead whale reported off the coast here. We have one more bail-out option, at Shark River, but if these conditions hold, we will try to push all the way to Sandy Hook, with dinner on board underway.