Washington DC

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Sun 27 May 2012 14:39

38:52.67N 77:01.57W

 

Saturday 26th May

 

We are still pinching ourselves to be sure that all this is true!

 

We are anchored in a sheltered spot, opposite Capital Yacht Club in the very centre of Washington. We are yards from the Jefferson Memorial and within half a mile are the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the US Capitol Building and the White House! (zoom in on our position map so you can see exactly where we are.)

 

But not only are we central to everything and everywhere, but the Capital Yacht Club and its members are something else again.

 

As we dropped the anchor, we were welcomed to Washington and the club by Chris who popped over in his dinghy just to explain a few basics. We then tidied up Serafina and ourselves, launched the dinghy and headed for the nearest pontoon on which there was a large party taking place (the renaming of a boat just purchased by a new club member). Here we were immediately welcomed by Scott who took it upon himself to be our guide and mentor and proceeded to take us on a full tour of the club and explained exactly how everything here works. Since the office was shut (it is a bank holiday weekend here) he provided us with a key which gives us access to all areas. For just $16 a day, we have full use of the club and all its facilities, which include the showers, free coffee, free soft drinks, free wifi, use of the bar, dining room, library and the secure dinghy dock. The banks of washing machines cost extra, but this is only $1.50 a go! Actually the list of benefits is seemingly endless and the details became blurred as Scott happily answered all our questions explaining that either he or the other members between them could arrange or procure anything we could think of.

 

We started off by taking full advantage of the showers which were wonderful and when we emerged, we found Scott and his wife, Freddi waiting in the bar. They invited us to help ourselves from the big buffet that was spread out on the patio area and when I suggested that we did not yet know the owner of the boat whose party this was, it was further explained that it was a Club event and that the new member was simply sponsoring it. As transient visitors we were to consider ourselves as full members for the duration of our stay and that we were very welcome to the party. As it turned out we did our best before retiring early to bed, quite exhausted by the long day and the intensity of the welcome and the avalanche of information poured over us!

 

The day had started at 0500 hours as we raised the anchor (and attendant mud) and headed off up the Potomac River again. It was a long hot and humid day and although the Potomac river is a wide expanse of water, the actual navigable channel is frequently narrow and quite shallow.   Surprisingly, in a river that is second in the amount of freshwater it delivers to the Chesapeake, we managed to ride the flood tide for 7.5 hours and at a greater speed than statistics suggested, arriving mid-afternoon which was great as we had thought we might not make it in the one day.   We passed countless huge sprawling houses and their tended but rather featureless grounds – the architecture tends towards the ostentatious rather than tasteful.   We saw many examples of the Scarlett O’Hara porch complete with full building height pillars tacked on to even quite modest houses but hours of fun for Sarah and some binoculars.   We were passed in both directions by motorboats of all shapes and sizes, but were quite intrigued by the low two or three man sports boats that all seemed to have some curious type of equipment attached on the bow deck area.  Later we were to discover that these boats are used for fishing and they take themselves into the shallows by the river edge and to maintain their position, they use an electric outboard motor that hinges down at the front of the boat and pulls them along very slowly and quietly!  Ospreys nesting, fishing and just flying by are as common as seagulls – which they presumably have replaced! We saw our first Bald Eagle and a Black Vulture, but were disturbed to see so many large, dead fish floating past. We will endeavour to find out more about this.

 

There was absolutely no wind and we so motored along all day passing the Marine Corps base at Quantico and America’s most visited tourist attraction, Mount Vernon which was George Washington’s home. We slid under several bridges, the lowest of which was as we approached Washington itself, The Woodrow Wilson Bridge. There seems to be very little agreement as to the actual air draft of this bridge and it was because of this that we had spent some time on Thursday measuring our mast height. We believe that we our aerials are 68ft above the water and there were some guides that have this bridge at 70ft – and then there is the tide to consider…. But all was fine and we had plenty of room and it would seem that the excellent ‘Active Captain’ setup might well be right when they say it is 85ft.

 

It was a big surprise to see how green everything was right up the very edge of the city as we had expected a long urban sprawl. The only slight drawback last night is that we appeared to be on some sort of special very low level flight path for police helicopters as they seemed to whizzing overhead at frequent intervals, threatening our mast head more than some of the earlier bridges.