Day 6 Great Bay to Atlantic City

A bumpy road.

As we did at the Tropicana, we had transferred the boats to my car before checking in at the Hilton as it has a roof rack and we could lock the boats to it. However, unlike the Tropicana, the Hilton parking garage had less clearance and despite a slow exit, the stern of my boat caught the roof of the garage once. It was even more slow-going after that, with our windows rolled down and repeated questions about and confirmations of clearance before advancing over changes in pavement and around corners. I was causing a small back up of cars in the garage. The boat did not appear to be damaged.

The put-in was the end of Great Bay Blvd., a long, narrow road out to the end of a peninsula of marsh. Between us and the Atlantic was the widest inlet on the ICW, Little Egg Inlet. And our course was across the largest stretch of open water, the Great Bay.

We put in at slack tide and with only a mild head wind we didn’t cross the narrowest point near the mouth of the inlet but rather paddled due west on course with the ICW. This body of water in mild wind was great practice for navigating by chart. Headed west, the main land is 5.5 mi away and a number of markers can be seen at the same time but without land nearby to give reference, it’s difficult to tell which is which. Using the charts and a compass you can set your heading. Without the wind to cause side slip we arrived at the next marker as planned.

As we entered the Main Marsh Thoro at G147, on the east side there were a dozen adult terns guarding a large group of baby terns. At first, the young birds moved several feet away from shore to the other side of a puddle. Then they got busy preening themselves and soon after slept while standing on one leg. The adults didn’t pay much attention to me either as they were busy fending off several gulls, squawking out to the terns flying above.

At R150 we encountered the start of what seemed an experiment to get bamboo to grow in the channel. Every couple of yards there was a piece of PVC staked into the sand. Every-other-one had a single stalk of bamboo standing beside it, straight and brown. They didn’t seem as if they were taking to the environment and I wondered why someone would want to introduce bamboo to the Jersey marsh.

At R176 we stopped to get out, stretch and examine a dredge pit. We had passed maybe a dozen of them and from my low vantage point in the kayak I was curious what was in them. Satellite images showed them as brighter green areas. On the climb we passed a rotting gull, the shell of a hermit crab and a single deer track in some mud. At the top there was not a fertile scene but rather a deserted one. It was just a big pit of sand with the wind racing over the top of it no deer in site. Atlantic City was in front of us and for the first time we noticed a big dark cloud behind us.

When we entered Mankiller Bay the dark cloud had separated and was on either side of us. The eastern cloud over the wind farm let out a bolt of lightning. The cloud to port side let go some rain. The wind picked up behind us, the tide was outgoing and we surfed down to the Rte. 87 bridge. Just as we beached between it and Harrah’s, a rainbow came out.

We rushed to get the boats loaded and just as we pulled out of the Harrah’s lot, the security guard pulled in. He didn’t follow us, however.

On the way back to the end of Great Bay Blvd. to retrieve the put-in car, the thunderstorm let loose. Video to follow.