We had a calm night.  We got up early to make the 102 miles north from Atlantic City to Great Kills, NY which is on the southern coastline of Staten Island.  The forecast is excellent for today’s travel.

Sunrise in Atlantic City, NJ

You can see in this picture the water wasn’t nearly as flat, but it wasn’t bad either.  The waves were supposed to be 1 – 2ft.  We can do that!!

AC boardwalk as we were entering the Atlantic Ocean

We left the AC, as the locals refer to Atlantic City, and headed north.  We traveled about 1.5 – 2 miles off shore following the coastline.  The red line shows our path from Atlantic City to the small little cove of Great Kills, NY.  We had several locals tell us that there is “absolutely nothing to see along the coast of Jersey”.  So, we made the big trip without stopping.

June 11 Jersey Shore Trip

Not much happening on the water first thing in the morning.  Actually, we didn’t see many boats of any kind.  We were surprised that there were such few boats.  Sun was shining.  The temperatures were in the mid 70’s.  Excellent!

First boat seen on the Ocean at 9:33am

Sail boat off in the distance

As we approached Manasquan, NJ we saw crab pots in 72 feet of water!!  Those black daubers ( as I like to call crab pots) were again the worst to see.  We couldn’t believe we would be dodging daubers in the Atlantic Ocean!!   Some folks put flags on them so they can be seen.  Other daubers were flat on the water and really hard to see.

11am Crab Pots in the Atlantic…do you see it?

Wayne suddenly said, “I see something jumping out of the water up ahead”.  Right.  Mermaids?  No, Not mermaids.  See… there it is again.  I get the binoculars out and sure enough something did rise above the water.  Not dolphins either since whatever it was was the the wrong shape.  I am thinking flying fish, mermen, or just something we hadn’t seen before having fun. As we got closer, we finally decided it was a whale!!

You might want to mute the audio, the picture is better without the roar of our boat engines.

A definite highlight!!

After only 10 hours, we were safely in our marina for the night.  Great Kills Yacht Club offers transient Loopers a place to stay.  A great place and wonderful people.  I think there were 4 loopers at Great Kills this night.  2 Loopers were staying in Great Kills and going from there to the “City”.  We and another Looper were going to go onward through the NY Harbor.  After spending 11 or more days cooped up in Cape May, it is time to make tracks!

Great Kills Yacht Club

A very successful trip on the Atlantic Ocean.  We still have to pinch ourselves with the reality of that achievement.  Since the weather is going to be good we will be pushing forward tomorrow into the New York Harbor.  How exciting!!