Monday, May 14, 2012

Atlantic City - We try the buffet

Part of what $150,000,000 renovations will buy
I checked the marine forecast this morning and found that a small craft advisory had been issued for the area we had to cross on the way to the Atlantic Highlands. Furthermore, the forecast only got worse over the next few days with wind and waves increasing. The earliest relief appeared to be Friday or Saturday, most likely Saturday. Luckily, the Golden Nugget marina has a weekly rate that totals only $1.20/ft per day if you have a Marina Life membership, which I do. Oh well....

So, it's time to make lemonade. First I had to get rid of the ICW mustache, after all we were docked right in front of the hotel, the second dock out. For transportation Atlantic City has the jitneys, an independently owed fleet of small vans to move customers around. The normal fare is $2.25 per trip, one way, which gets rather expensive fast. On their website I discovered they had a senior rate of only $0.75 per trip but you had to buy the tickets in advance at one of their centers, a big pain - but then a big savings too. I took a jitney into town to their center of operations, pushed the button on the door which signaled the office inside to open it (yes, it appeared to be one of those places where you might want to have your front door locked at all times...), I came in and bought a book of tickets (only sold in books of 10). Standing outside, I thought it better that I move further south and then discovered that one ought to stand in front of a casino instead, otherwise, nobody gets off and the van is full, no room for you. Eventually I got back to the boat.

Engineer for the Superyacht Boardwalk
I had a conversation with the engineer for Boardwalk, the huge 162 ft superyacht docked in front of us. It turns out that it belongs to the owner of the Golden Nugget. Being an engineer, he's interested in the numbers on the boat, one being the fuel capacity of 20,000 gallons! How would you like to pay the refueling bill for that!  The 20,000 gallons will get you about 1000 miles before requiring another refueling. For now they will be docked here, they don't move often.

For dinner we were going to try Happy Hour at the Charthouse but found that their Happy Hour was not held on Mondays. With that we tried the buffet which was okay. Tuesday we'll use one of our $0.75 tickets to explore the boardwalk (by the ocean, not the superyacht) and, of course, keep abreast of weather reports.

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