Days 65,66: The Potomac and the Patuxent

5/16/18:  Today we found ourselves coasting down the Potomac River and then cruising up the Patuxent River.  When we looked at the hourly forecast for Wednesday, it showed Zeus’s lightening bolts on every hour of the day.  Great, just great.  We don’t like boating with Zeus – the Greek god of lightening.  At final check before going to sleep, we might have a 4 hour window in the morning without Zeus.  Alarm set for 5:30.  😳😴  With eyeballs barely open, get up and check the latest forecast.  Not that we can actually stay here another night anyway because they’re booked (we asked) but what will our plan be?  It looks like there may be less Zeus activity than previously predicted. OK then – let’s get going! I bailed out poor Stuart.  The way he sits on his cradle, a lot of water lays in the V bottom before it will get high enough to drain out the hole in the back.   We untied about 6:30 and cruised out of DC, and past Alexandria.  With all of the rain that we’ve had the last two nights, there was a LOT of debris in the river!!  So far, so good.  A little bit of rain, but no thunder or lightening.  Our plan B was to go up Breton Bay to Occaquan if we needed to get off the river after about four hours.  We’ve heard it is a neat town.  But the weather was mild and cooperating, so we kept going with plan A to go back to Colonial Beach.   With the next 5 days showing lightening storms every day all day long, we decided to go as far as we can, when we can, to make progress to the next place that we planned to visit.  Unfortunately, once that decision is made, it turns into about a 70 mile trip, because there are very few places to stay in between on this River Potomac.  So I called Mr. Bill at the Boathouse Marina in Colonial Beach, and he said our same slip was open and waiting for us.  He is such a nice man!  Plan A it is!

Even though the tide/current chart showed that we were on a flood tide (incoming), the river was actually flowing OUT in our favor.  There has been a lot of rain!  For most of the day, we were getting about a 3mph benefit from the river current — Good fuel economy per mile today! Here is our travel map.  We never changed engine speed.  The green line is our normal cruising speed, about 9mph.  The red is where the river was helping us out, at about 12+mph!

We heard the Coast Guard issuing the Live Fire warnings for the Navy Middle Range on the Potomac, so once we got close, (at about the top of the red uppy-hump on the map) we hailed the Range Boat on the radio.  He told us that they were scheduled for today, but the ceiling was too low with not enough visibility, so “The river is yours, Captain”.  Sweet.  We no sooner pulled into the marina and got tied up, and it started to rain.  And then pour.  For several hours.  Mr. Bill has a washer and dryer in his shop that he lets transient boaters use during business hours.  After all of our hot sweaty days in DC, it was a good opportunity to wash some clothes.  It was about 2:00, and they like to close up shop at 4:00.  So I trudged up to the shop in my raincoat with my basket of dirty sweaty duds.  It was still mid 70’s outside, so I was steaming inside my coat!  Got the load of clothes washed, and I figured I had plenty of time for them to dry.  At 4:00, I went to get the clothes out of the dryer, and dang it if they weren’t just hot and still pretty darn damp.  Another 30 minutes?  I went and sat in the Captain’s lounge to wait, so that Mr. Bill would know I was still there.  A nice man and woman came in and introduced themselves as Chris and Holly with the Sea Scouts.  They were meeting here this evening – I think Mr. Bill helps sponsor them.  Anyway, we got to chatting about where I was from and why I was here at the marina.  Holly was especially interested in the Great Loop – she had heard of it but didn’t know much about it, and was just delighted to hear about the adventure.

4:30, and my clothes were not drying.  Another 30 minutes and change the setting?   By 5:00, I told Mr. Bill the dryer was not drying.  It was heating, but the humidity would not leave. Either it wasn’t venting or no fan circulating, or something was just wrong.  He apologized all over the place.  I gathered up my load of damp duds, and figured I’d just lay them around in the boat, and maybe with the air conditioning blowing, they’d eventually dry.  It was still raining, otherwise I might have asked Mr. Bill for the golf cart keys to go find a laundromat.  Holly was not going to have any of this!  She insisted that she take my clothes to her house, just 5 minutes away, and dry them.  She is a sailboater, and she said there was no way this stuff was going to dry in this weather.  Oh my goodness, what a sweetheart!! 💞😊. She wouldn’t take ‘no, but thank you” for an answer.   So she took my basket of clothes and said she would text me when she was back with them.  The first text I got was asking if we needed anything at the store!  Less than an hour later, she was back with my dry clothes.  And it was still pouring down rain.  I gave her a bottle of wine in sincere appreciation for her kindness, and our boat card with the address to our blog so that she can follow our adventures and learn more about the Loop.  I thanked her again and gave her a big hug.   She was such a sweet “harbor host” who doesn’t know much about the Loop, but knows a lot about hospitality!  Thank you Holly!!

Again, Zeus reigns supreme on the weather forecast.  We will wake up, look outside, check the forecast, and then decide if we will stay at Mr. Bill’s another night, or go for it down the river some more on Thursday.

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5/17/18:  7:00am – the fog that was forecasted was a no-show; no rain yet;  very cloudy;  very calm;  …. forecast now says Zeus will let loose with his cosmic power in the afternoon…. maybe.  OK – let’s go.  Again, I bail out poor Stuart.  It has really rained a lot.  The carpets on the back deck are soaking wet, with no chance to dry out for several days.  And all of our ropes are soggy.  We planned about 65 miles today.  We heard Coast Guard warnings on the radio for Live Fire again.  We tried calling the Range Boats, but no response, so we proceeded down the river.  It was like glass today.  About 70 degrees, no wind, no rain, no lightening, no crab pots, no other boats, no live fire from the Navy…. NICE!

We didn’t have quite as much help with river current today, but that was OK.  We’d heard that the mouth of the Potomac where it meets the Chesapeake can be rough sometimes, but today is was splat flatter than a pancake.  We turned north up the bay and found some crab pot buoys.  We were back in the salt water!

Before long, the wind picked up and we had some wave action.  The wind was from the north – THAT was not in ANY forecast.  Any of the 5 knot wind forecasted was supposed to be from the south today.  Right.  We moved downstairs to the inside, thinking this could get stormy.

The waves were coming right at us straight on, and Island Girl went through them just fine.  We know from experience in Florida that with wind that just comes out of nowhere, comes rain.  Yep.  It did.  But no lightening, so that was good!  However, the clouds settled down pretty low, so we lost sight of land for awhile.  Yay for radar and all of the other good electronics we have!

The rain quit about when we were turning northwest to start up the Patuxent River, so now the waves were hitting more on the side.  It wasn’t bad, because there was soon land over on that starboard side to help break the fetch (that’s a term for how waves build up over an expanse of water).  Captain went back upstairs for better visibility and for better eyeballs on electronics.  Being downstairs, he only has his phone to show him some things that the chart plotter upstairs shows – his phone is bluetoothed to the upstairs plotter, but it is a pretty small screen!  The downstairs plotter is older and not as fancy.  The clouds were still really low, so visibility as we were changing course was limited.  We cruised into the channel to Solomon’s Maryland, and hailed Spring Cove Marina.  We stopped for fuel first, then went to our assigned spot on a face dock.  There was just a little breeze, and the rain had not started back up again yet  – YAY!  Captain did two nice dockings.  We’ll be here for at least two nights, maybe four, as we wait for weather.  Wind is adding to the forecast now, and our next destination will have us crossing the Chesapeake Bay.  We don’t want wind and rain and waves for that journey, even though its only 40 miles –  because this is supposed to be fun, right?!  We can wait for comfortable weather.  This blog report was two days of not much scenery or history or anything very exciting to share with y’all.  Just 140 miles of motoring along inside a nice comfy boat.  Spring Cove Marina and Solomons Maryland looks like a nice place to hang out for awhile.  They have a pool here (not much use in this rain… oh yes… it is raining again), and a pool bar that will be open tomorrow.  They also have a loaner car and a courtesy shuttle to town.  We have some ‘splorin’ to do!  Aaannndd…. There is a “Ruddy Duck Brewery & Grill” that needs to be investigated!