September 26-29, 2009... Sitting in Atlantic City

Well. We weren’t even supposed to stop here, but our bailout position has become home. The SW winds of 15-20 knots with gusts to 25 and 30 have kept us from moving on to Cape May. Some brave fellow cruisers left a couple of days ago to make the trek and they came back a few hours later. The winds were fierce and the waves worse. One of them sacrificed his dinghy engine to Poseidon -- it was ripped right off the transom by a wicked wave. Kammerman’s Marina helped us out with laundry facilities and a sense that we aren’t in such a bad place after all. Today we stole some slack tide time and kayaked over to the cove opposite our anchorage. For the past two days we have been talking about whether it would be better to be in there and out of the current and fetch. After our close to the water research, we figured it is better to be where we are. So here we sit, next to the Coast Guard station, patiently hoping they take down the small craft advisory flag. We listen to the marine weather forecast twice a day, get GRIB files over the SSB and wait. Looks like Thursday (the 1st of OCTOBER!!!) is our go day...