We walked Frank and waited for the tide to start rising. Today we were heading about forty one miles to an anchorage we had read about. We are getting close to the end of the New Jersey ICW and are excited about that. The water has been super shallow and we’ve tried to be prudent about traveling at the best tides. We pulled anchor and headed out with the wind blowing around ten knots. We wound our way past Atlantic City and had a few spots where I held my breath due to the depth. We were coming to another inlet: Little Egg Inlet. Our charts were showing the way to go and I was following the GPS, then I got confused. Due to shoaling, the charts give full disclosure that the channel markers are moved regularly and you should follow the markers. I was doing fine until I couldn’t locate the next one. I thought I saw it and was heading towards it when we came to a complete stop. Shit. Grounded again. Since this has happened before I probably should have done what I had learned, but no. The last week had been ploughing through some low spots, so when we got stuck instead of trying to back off of it I tried to throttle through it. We moved a little, then nothing. Now I was really stuck. The wind was blowing and since we were near an inlet the water was a bit rocky. Lauren had come out and was showing some concern about our situation. I could see sand all around us and no way for me to do anything except call Towboat US. They are the AAA on the water. I called on the VHF radio and they responded quickly. The Captain told me he would be there in a few minutes. Apparently they know the spots to hang out where people get stuck on a regular basis. Sure enough he pulled up and saw our predicament. We talked on the radio and he made his plan. He pulled to the side and was going to try to pull us off the sandbar sideways. I secured the line and he start pulling us which caused us to list pretty good to the side. Lauren was not happy with this. She put on a life jacket to be safe. He continued to try this for a bit but it was not working. We were stuck good. He changed his plan and we tied from the front and he tried pulling us off. His large twin engines were going but the boats weren’t moving. He continued this and I tried throttling forward with him. Still nothing. We’ve been stuck here now for about thirty five minutes and nothing is working yet. At least the water level is still rising. He continued to pull and after what seemed like forever it looked like we were maki some forward progress. We were! We inched off the sandbar and were moving on our own power now. We disengaged the lines and he stayed close while o tested the systems to make sure all was well. I gave him our information and we were on our way after almost an hour of being stuck. I don’t like New Jersey anymore even though it was my fault. We finally made it to the anchorage we had planned at about 6:30pm. We made our way in to the harbor and scouted it out. We wanted to be far away from the inlet, it there wasn’t any spots that we felt comfortable with. We ended up dropping anchor in the area of a couple of other boats but far enough away from them for everyone’s privacy. Frank was walked on a nice beach and dinner was made. After all the stress of the day we retired early after planning our next stop. The weather is supposed to stay windy and build throughout the day. We decided to make a short run to a marina where we can sit out the weather safely, resupply and do some laundry before we leave New Jersey.
As far as we know, people were skylarking at sea before they were larking on land.