After the small and rather quaint town of Atlantic Highlands we traveled south and made the jump into the open Atlantic Ocean. Here I should confess that this has been a bit of a fear of mine. What will it be like out in the open water? I’ve tried to ignore it and down play it but here finally it was time for me to actually have to face my fear.
It’s been kind of like a fear of flying. How exactly can you take a trip to Hawaii if you won’t get on the airplane? So I’ve known in the back of my brain that you can’t get to Bahamas without going into open water. But frankly I’ve been ignoring it.
Turns out that wasn’t the bad part. The 3-mile trip from Atlantic Highlands to the point of Sandy Hook was rougher than that to Atlantic City. In fact when we got to Atlantic City I was still game to go to the next port since the ocean was so calm. However the weather prediction was for increasing wind and coordinating waves so we decided we should stick with the plan and go into Atlantic City.
We anchored out due to the high cost of dock space but got permission to take the dinghy into Trump Casino and Marina docks. It was everything Atlantic City should be glitzy, with a capitol “G”. But in the end, three days later I’m sad to say that there hasn’t been a port I’ve been happier to see in the rear view.
The only area to anchor is along side the bridge and on nice days there was an insane number of power boaters zooming by trying to catch fish. There were dozens of boats all willing to zip by us within feet and send us rocking all day long but worse than that was that the tide and the wind were both strong and opposing seemingly all the time. For the three days that we anchored in Atlantic City we seemed to be in constant and perpetual bob mode. It got so bad that Nicole couldn’t eat or drink without throwing up so we went in to Trump and got a room. In her defense it wasn’t just the waves, because of the wind and rain on the second and third days it was impossible to spend any time on deck so we were all more prone to being seasick.
Who knew that if you wanted to dock it was $2 foot (our boat being 47ft means it’s nearly $100 night) and then you still are staying on the boat but getting a room was only $50 a night. So we stayed the night in the Trump Tower and walked on the Boardwalk, which was fun for the kids. We went to a shop called “It’s Sugar” and the kids had fun picking out candy from an amazing variety of sweets.
Still Atlantic City is without a doubt my least favorite stay on the trip so far; there is no good way to get around unless you are gambling. There’s nothing really to do in the casinos unless you are gambling. The food was overpriced, hard to get to and not of very high quality. I was disappointed with nearly every meal and really couldn’t wait to leave, except of course that it meant we had to go back outside… and because Boyd said this would be “the big jump”.