Return to Colonial Beach, VA

4/20/2017

We woke this morning still trying to decide our plans for the day. When asked by the marina manager if we planned to stay today or depart, I said “leave” while Clark said “stay”.  Clearly it was time to discuss our plans. With rain forecast, we thought the weather would be a determining factor on our plans, but instead of rain we had only partly cloudy skies.

Before we could do anything else, we needed to return the rental car. When we walked in there, the branch manager recognized us and said, “You’re back! Ready for more boat travel?” I replied, “Yes, and we need a ride back to the boat.” The store manager asked what are plans were for today, and I told her, “We still have to decide. We planned on discussing it in the car and instead had to pay attention to directions from Google Maps.”

The staff at this location is particularly friendly, and the young man who drove us back to the marina chatted with us along the way wanting to know where we had come from and where we were going.  We told him we are from New Jersey, and then he asked a question I have not gotten before, “Near what college?” I said Monmouth University which meant nothing to him, so Clark suggested Rutgers which he knew. During our discussion, I happened to mention the Jersey Shore, and he immediately connected that to the television series by that name. Whereby Clark said, “There’s a television show called ‘Jersey Shore’?” 

As we walked back towards the boat, after saying farewell to our friendly driver, I told Clark that my preference would be to get moving. I truly did not feel like doing the tourist thing today, so if I stayed at National Harbor, my only plans might be to do some laundry. Since we are so close to home, unless something causes me to change my mind, I hope to not have to do laundry until we are back there.

Given that input, Clark said we needed to fill the water tank and do engine checks before we could depart. He also had some personal business to take care of that required him to mail a letter. When he walked up to the post office, he passed a statue on The American Way that we had not seen when walking there with Sierra.

This is a familiar scene from post WW II

We pulled in our lines and left the dock at National Harbor late in the morning. At that point we did not know how far we would get or where we would spend the night.

Over the course of the day, Clark busily snapped photos of our trip down the Potomac River.

Bridge Architecture

 As we passed Mount Vernon, Clark lamented not visiting there on this trip. Perhaps we can get there another day.

Mount Vernon

Mount Vernon

Ferry at docks for Mount Vernon

Continuing down the Potomac …

Views on the Potomac River

Buoys

 On our travels today we passed by the "Ghost Fleet of Mallows" - the graveyard of more than 230 U.S. ships. Ninety steamships built around World War I were scuttled and burned here. Later other boats were brought to this graveyard.

Ghost Fleet of Mallows

The state purchased this area and made a park out of it with a ramp for kayaks and canoes.

Accomac Ferry Wreck 

River Scenery

VTOL Plane overhead 
with rotating engines that allow it to land helicopter style

Fancy aid-to-navigation, Green Marker on the Potomac River.

Campground in Colonial Beach, VA

Same Campground

We managed to make our way back to Colonial Beach where we stayed with Jeff and family on our way to Washington. Clark called the Colonial Beach Yacht Center where we stayed at that time and, like last time, got no answer or return phone call. He decided to call The Boathouse Marina to see if he could find the manager of the CBYC visiting there as he did previously.

The CBYC manager was not there; however, the owner of The Boathouse Marina said he could accommodate us for the night, so we set our course for their location. Whereas, when we arrived at CBYC a week ago, no one assisted us with our lines, here we had no less than three people ready to each take a line. Even though we arrived late in the day, all of them had big smiles of welcome and introduced themselves. We even got an invitation to come visiting on the owner's boat after we got settled. The warmth of the greeting and some strong Southern accents reminded me of the folks we met when we stayed in Carrabelle, Florida.

With rain in the forecast and dark clouds on the horizon, Clark volunteered that we would come over to visit if the rain held off. We adjusted our lines to Clark’s satisfaction then cooked and ate dinner before venturing over to a neighboring boat belonging to the marina owner.  When we arrived for our visit, however, we found the marina owner had gone out on a “rescue mission” and was not on board.

Instead we found three other people enjoying the huge cockpit of the owner’s boat. We joined them for a bit of conversation. They explained that a new-to-boating “captain”, who had purchased a boat just that day, had left at 2:30 p.m. instead of heeding the marina owner’s advice to wait a day to leave. Several hours later, he called the marina in distress that he had boat trouble. Bill, owner of The Boathouse Marina, left immediately to go help him.

As we talked to folks waiting for Bill's return, lightning flashed repeatedly in the distance. After a while, another man joined us. He had been out helping to look for the boat in distress in a boat he said was built in 1919. While out there, something on board (the exhaust pipe) had sprung a leak, and he said he had a stream of water shooting up in the air the “width of a pencil”. He abandoned the search and came back to the marina with reports that the Potomac had three-foot waves due to the brewing storm.

The rains started to pitter-pat on the roof of the boat, so Clark and I decided we better get back to our boat just a couple of slips away. When we got there, we found that all our hard work setting up our lines had to be redone because, with the strong winds, the lines needed to be tightened to hold the boat closer to the dock, and one fender had to be moved to prevent the boat from scraping on the dock.

Clark climbed on the boat to adjust the fender, and I quickly pointed out that we needed to change positions. I clearly did not have the strength to fight the wind to get the boat far enough away from the dock to insert a fender! Thankfully, we managed to get everything squared away before the rain came pouring down.  As a benefit of the heavy rainstorm, which gave the boat a shower, we now have a lot less pollen on the boat.

Usually, I like to work on my blog, but this night, I had no desire to open my laptop whatsoever. Instead I picked up my tablet and played Alphabetty. After the rains stopped, Clark walked up to the marina and took a shower and afterwards watched the evening news. His taking a shower reminded me that I should take one too to remove the day’s pollen stuck to my hair and skin as I am suffering allergies worse than I have experienced in a very long time.

While Clark walked up at the marina to get his shower, around 10:30 at night, he found the owner talking to the man who needed to be "rescued". Apparently, Tow Boat U.S. came to assist, but ultimately Bill towed the boat back to his marina. Instead of a leisurely night cracking crabs for dinner, he spent the entire night out on his boat collecting this novice boater.