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! Read more
DC
Day 64: Another hot adventure day in DC
5/15/18: We had a bunch of rain overnight.. which always wakes us up since we sleep in the bow of the boat. There isn’t anything to soften the sound of rain pounding on the fiberglass above us. When I went to bed last night, my pillow was wet. Darn – the leak is back. And then, sometime in the middle of the night, the wind shifted to be coming right at our starboard bow, so we had a steady flow of little waves bouncing us up and down all night (and all day). It wasn’t awful, just constant motion and sound.
I was pretty sure Kenny wasn’t going to tag along with me today. He wasn’t into another 6.6 miles of walking. So I got up and got all my stuff ready to go. The weather was already in the upper 60’s, with a high forecasted in the 90’s. He said he’d stay at the boat and do some mechanic stuff. I gave him my basic itinerary, and off I went. I summoned an Uber ride to take me to the Washington National Cathedral, which is about 4.5 miles away. OH MY! What a magnificent place! This is the front view. Notice how small the people at the base near the door are.
Day 63: How hot is it?! Toasty in DC!
5/14/18: Sunday night along the wharf was MUCH quieter than Saturday night! Sunday evening was pretty cool temperature wise – not as much fun at the wharf if you have to wear a fuzzy, compared to the summer hottie clothes all those young ladies were wearing on Saturday. 😉 We enjoyed a beverage up in the Yacht Club. Everyone is so nice here – not hoytie-toytie at all! And it is a beautiful club. It was all rebuilt in the last year when the entire wharf was rejuvenated. This yacht club is actually over 100 years old, and it has always been here in this location on Washington Channel.
Day 62: Rainy and cool in WA DC
5/13/18: It is Sunday! I really REALLY wanted to go to worship at the Washington National Cathedral. I don’t know anything about Episcopalian worship style, but I just really wanted to feel the place during worship. It is such an iconic place of worship in our nation. To do this would require an Uber ride to get there, and I had that figured out. But I didn’t have the weather under my control. It poured down rain for a few hours this morning, right when we needed to be getting ready and going. I decided we didn’t want to get soaked, and that we’ll go see the cathedral later. Bummer.😞 So how are we going to see WA DC? We’ve had luck with hop-on-hop-off trolleys before, so we booked 2 day tickets for that. We could walk from the marina over to the Jefferson Memorial and hop on at that stop. The rain stopped, so we got ready and headed out. And…. the rain started again. It was like Seattle rain – not hard, but enough to get you wet. It didn’t last long, thank goodness! What a difference from yesterday’s mid 90’s. Today was in the low 60’s! Read more