We looked at the weather forecast in the morning and the winds were to be 20 knots out of the SSW and there were 4′ to 6′ swells out of the east with a period of 10 seconds. I had read a lot of reports on the inside New Jersey ICW. Some were not so good that the water was pretty shallow and others were that if you were careful you could manage it.
We decide on the inside route on the ICW. I had Active Captain on my IPhone so I had access to the reported shoals along the way. It was one of the most taxing days I have spent on the water. The New Jersey ICW is anything but straight and there is a constant turning and checking the buoys to make sure you are in the channel. Also tracking where the shoaling is so they can be avoided and then the fisherman. With so much shallow water they want to fish the edge of the channel and they really do not want to move for the boats in the ICW. There was one boat that was did not move and he was only about 50′ from the channel marker and I went thru that 50′. He did not seem to happy about it. Some of these guys think you can go anywhere to avoid them.
The ICW scenery in the undeveloped areas looked a lot like the low country from Georgia and South Carolina. The cities were nice and as we came into Atlantic City we went thru a pretty tight area that was heavily developed with residential along the shores and boats moored in front of the houses. These were not large houses but more like the smaller homes you would find in a densely populated city. We had to request 4 bridge openings because the streets were about 10′ above the waterway. It was pretty interesting because we had not seen this before.
The Farley State Marina is attached to the Golden Nugget Casino. The marina office is not what you would call your typical marina office. You are treated more like a guest at the Casino Hotel than a normal marina. It is a very large marina and there was some grass for Candy although we had to do some scouting to find it.
We ate dinner in the Casino at Lillie’s. It is an oriental restaurant and the food was really good. We were able to sit and have wine and eat our dinner while we watched all these people losing their money at the slot machines. The people watching was quite interesting. They even allow mothers with their strollers into the Casino. We left the Casino without even placing a bet.