We didn’t leave the marina until about 11:30, waiting again for the tide to be on the rise. We are now traveling in a bay so it is a little deeper, but not much and I still have to watch for shallow spots and shoals. The wind was blowing about thirteen knots when we were leaving. Before we left though I wanted to get a pump out. As I was backing out of the slip Lauren alerted me to a barge coming down the river behind us. Good thing because I did not see it. It passed and I now was turned toward the dock. We maneuvered in and got tied up. The pump out was completed and it was time to leave. The lines were tossed and I couldn’t get us off the dock against the current and the wind. We were heading forward but I couldn’t get the bow around. Ughh. We stopped and tied off to contemplate this situation. The dock hand was also giving his two cents and we decided to try a spring line. That didn’t work as well as when I did it in Virginia, so I stopped that attempt. I realized there was enough room at the end of the dock to get it around, but I had to get to the end and turn before hitting the boat tied to the next dock. Here we go. There was actually plenty of room, so once I had the transom clear I was able to turn and get out of there. We headed out of the river to the bay and the waves were kicking up. It wasn’t too uncomfortable but it wasn’t a nice ride either. Unfortunately since we were going on a rising tide the current was against us so it took about two hours to go eleven miles. We turned in to Silver Bay and worked our way back to the anchorage. There was a small trawler anchored there but plenty of room for several boats. Regrettably it wasn’t as protected as we thought. We inched back as close as we could to shore but it was still a bit rocky. We took Frank to shore and explored some beach area and hung out on land. We checked the weather and it still is forecast to be windy. Too windy to cross the Atlantic so we have to find somewhere else to wait it out. We have read that a lot of people stage at Manasquan Inlet for the jump across the ocean, but there are only expensive marinas there and no good anchorages, although we did see one that might work out. We did some more research on the trip and decided we would get there and see what happens.
As far as we know, people were skylarking at sea before they were larking on land.