We have been anchored in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey for the past five days, waiting for the wind and seas to cooperate with us on our southbound journey. We are not alone.
When we got here last week, there were very few boats in the anchorage. As time has worn on, more and more boats have arrived- it’s quite crowded now. It is obvious that every one of these boast is waiting for the weather window to clear the New Jersey coast and head south.
It has become almost festive- earlier this morning a guy sailed by in his dinghy, just killing time, and as he passed us, hollered, “Heading south tomorrow too? Gonna be a parade of boats heading out tomorrow!”
So we are prepped and ready ourselves. We hoisted our dinghy aboard and strapped it down to the foredeck, got our safety tethers made up and ready. Our course is laid into the chartplotter, and we had a fine dinner and tucked into bed early so we could leave before first light.
But we were just woken up by a boat dragging their anchor and crashing into us. There is a little bit of rain and wind happening, and the boat that was once upwind of us is now downwind of us. They woke us up along the way.
I cannot describe what a horrible feeling it is to be woken up by a crashing sound, a huge THUMP, followed by the grinding of two hulls sliding alongside each other, and then the running, naked, up on deck to see what the hell is going on… Fun times!
I’ll spare the details, because there’s not a lot of them. The Canadian boat upwind of us dragged down on us, and being Canadian, were extremely apologetic about the whole thing. We shined spotlights on the situation, exchanged names, and generally behaved like civilized beings, and then called it a night.
And the wind has already shifted. We are off to transit the New Jersey coast in a few hours!