Atlantic City in the morning sun as we left. Boardwalk goes from the largest building to the left.
It’s Saturday night and we made it today to Liberty Landing Marina in Jersey City, a 15 minute ferry ride from the NYC World Trade Center dock. The prediction for Saturday being the first of several decent travel days stayed the same from Wednesday until today. The winds were way down and the sun was out for the first half of the day. It was lightly cloudy with a following wind for the rest of the day, so there was zero relative wind and just warm enough. The 2 – 3 foot waves were long period traveling in our direction and just a little faster, so it was a slow rise and fall with no crashing or rocking, pretty much like we’ve had before off the New Jersey coast.
A whole lot of boats just past Barnegat inlet. Triangles are AIS boats.
The preceding days were pretty bad. Two days ago a boat a few slips down went out the Atlantic City inlet and came right back in again. Today with the bad weather and waves finally done it was busy out there. Boats of all types were out fishing as we passed near Barnegat and Manasquan inlets. A number of other boats were going north like we were. Today was the day we had all been waiting for.
Jersey City & Statue of Liberty to the left, Manhattan to the right. We dock just this side of tallest Jersey building.
Today was the day everyone was waiting for to get into Liberty Landing Marina as well. Since we could not reserve a slip until we could guarantee our arrival we were surprised to get a one. It is one of the few marinas that take larger boats near Manhattan. It took three phone calls and a bit of begging. We are in someone’s permanent slip and have to move to another tomorrow morning. I think we can stay there. We’ll be here for 5 nights and then move about 50 miles north up the Hudson.
Pretty big crowd today (Saturday). Last year this was the most crowded place we visited.
Coming into New York harbor, as well as traveling the Hudson past Manhattan, are the most spectacular views we have seen from our boat. Everything is so big. This time we first noticed the tops of One World Trade Center and the Empire State building from 33 miles out. Everything is so big. The Verrazano Narrows Bridge or Manhattan skyline can be clearly in front of us but it still takes hours to reach them. There is no reasonable substitute for New York City.
We had a great dinner at the Liberty House restaurant on the east side of the marina. Sue liked the atmosphere as well. White table cloths without the white butcher paper on top and a tall candle! They really went all out.
Hot weather not predicted yet for this week in NYC, but things should be pretty good except for rain on Monday.
We’ll visit Manhattan tomorrow.
Jack & Sue 