Detour in Manasquan

We left Atlantic Highlands yesterday and headed down along the Jersey Shore in high spirits, Evan, Vanessa, and I. It was sunny and warm out, and Hurrican Igor-spawned swells were gentle and far apart. Unfortunately, the light wind was directly behind us. This does not make for speedy sailing at all. (I know it seems like it should--doesn't it just blow us where we want to go then?--but the physics work better when the wind comes across the sails). So we chugged along on motor in order to make a minimum speed of 5 knots an hour. (This is 5.75 miles an hour, not much slower than the 7.6 miles an hour that is this boat's maximum speed. I will be posting about this in some other post soon.)

Things were going well for the first few hours, then I started noticing some of that seasickness from the other day. Newly learned lessons from the other day were put to the test. Valiantly applied as they were, they failed. A few hours after the first feeling of heartburn, I felt my mouth water, which could only mean one thing. I leaned over and puked, wondering if I had turned green just before, like I hear some people do.

We held open the option of cutting this leg short and ducking into Manasquan, which was on our way and not too many hours off.  I sat up on deck and watched for the swells and rogue lobster pots. I drank some ginger-lemon-honey tea. I thought how beautiful and strangely abstract the sea looks. I took  pictures. 

Then the decision about whether to cut our leg short was made for us: the engine cut out.

Damn engine! It came back, but died again a short while later. Evan's BoatUS membership came in handy, and he radioed in for a towboat to come pull us through the long inlet into the small harbor of Manasquan.  Night fell by the time we finally arrived at the inlet. Vanessa said she felt like she was riding Pirates of the Caribbean at EuroDisney. This boat (imagine it lit up at night), with its skull and crossbones, may have created that impression.

This is our first real stop on the Jersey Shore. We will be here for a few days, fiddling with the fuel filter, waiting for another good weather window, and checking out this town.