May 14 Capital Yacht Club DC to Anchorage North of Bluff Point Colonial Beach VA 56 6 Miles

Two observations: 1. From the last bridge in the ICW in South Norfolk, to Maine -- no bridges that we have to worry about!  2. The Washington Channel is the flying lane for helicopters in the DC area, which has lots of them, apparently to keep them out of the way of the runways of Dulles Intl Airport that are parallel to the Chanel. If you stay at the Capital YC -- get used to their noise!

It was cold the past two nights and yesterday and today. So I was warmly bundled for todays 7:00 to 3:45 passage  -- a retracing of our path, back down the Potomac. The early start was dictated by the desire to capture a few hours of good tide.  We went further than Fairview Beach because we had the time and want to go further tomorrow too. Here is Fairview from the channel, above the gate in the lifelines. It shows that this river is w i d e!

Tide was favorable at the start, giving us, with engine, small jib and wind at our back, about 7.5 knots, gradually diminishing to 4.9 and then building back up to 5.9. Going downstream is faster than going upstream.
With the wind behind us the small jib self-jibes at will while the other two sails, though they would have given us more speed, would have been a bear to handle through all the jibes of the twisty river. In fact the Potomac is a pretty easy river to navigate, especially once you have been there. Our electronic chart plotter displays the water more than 20 feet deep, the channel, in light blue, with dark blue for the shallower water at the sides. Red and green buoys are shown and we generally respect them, but if you stay in the light blue, you cant go wrong.
Tonight the wind is predicted from the south at 5 to 10 knots so while we elected to stop in the Potomac, rather than in a harbor, we are on the north side of a bluff which should make the 5 to 10 knots of wind from the south easy to take tonight. We have 60 feet of snubbed chain in 11 feet of water and no other boats in sight. For those with Google Earth who want to know, we are at 38 degrees, 16.6 minutes North; 076 degrees, 59.4 minutes West. Here:

I have tried to show pictures of things you have not seen before, or new views of the old.  Like this style of buoy. Ive never seen such before. They are common on this river. This one has a guest, or squatter, who is hawking "Danger" as we got too close for his comfort. Check the current running past it-- the "bow wave"

Floridian gargantuan houses on the upper Potomac.

A better view, on a non-foggy day, of the huge power transmission towers with strobe lights.

The rivers banks are lined with such cliffs, as if the Potomac is trying to become the Grand Canyon. It still has a way to go.

Maryland Point Light, with rapids flowing past and many birds watching from the man made islands on both sides.

Tomorrows destination: St. Marys, Maryland.

Read More..

March 21 22 Lake Boca to the North Palm Beach Marina and Lay Day There 31 Miles 12 Bridges

We hauled our anchor at 7:15 for the 7:30 opening of our first bridge and motored all the way, tying up port side to, at this lovely marina at 2 pm. More mega houses (but this is not a real estate blog) and in Palm Beach, we saw the largest aggregation of mega yachts in one place since St. Maarten. This is another of the places where very wealthy people congregate. There is a boat show next week and this may have attracted some of the BIG boats. The last of the bridges, the Flagler Memorial in Palm Beach, was the site of the most congestion I have ever seen at a bridge: about thirty boats, half going north and half south, were traffic jammed near the bridge before its opening, trying to get through, one at a time, in the ten minutes that the tender allowed for the scheduled opening. We spent most of the passage with s/v Elle & I, from Vermont, a 35 foot Beneteau or Jeaneau. Alas, we never exchanged contact information with her people.

We missed one opening which cost us half an hour, because of my confusion. I made a list of the bridges, in consecutive order, with their names (because they wont answer your call unless you call them by name). I also figured out the distance between the bridges and the times between their openings such as some on the hour and half while others at 15 and 45 minutes after the hour. Most of the bridges open at such fixed times but some open on request. But some tenders try to accommodate boaters by delaying the opening for a few minutes while fast boats cool their heels, in order to let slower boats catch up, so both can get through with one opening and less disruption of automobile traffic. We were the beneficiaries of this practice at one bridge and the victims of it at another. These delays make it almost impossible to plan your speed between bridges since the time is shortened, but the distance is not.
North Palm Beach Marina was dredged out of the west side of the ICW and enjoys decent wifi and the best restrooms we have seen on this trip -- large, marbled, each with a large shower stall that does not drain into the drying area, a bench, lots of hooks and plenty of flow of hot water.
We had dinner at the restaurant of the marina with Erwin.

He has been such a huge help to me ever since I joined the Harlem in 1990 --Wow, that 25 years ago! The list of favors is so long that I couldnt include it here. But we talked about several of the prominent ones over dinner, including the time he spent two days taking the head off the Atomic-4 gas engine of my first boat, machining the surface smooth again and reinstalling it with gasket, all just days before a two week Club Cruise. He said he would help me but in fact he did the work and I handed him tools. Erwin was Commodore of the Club for an unprecedented two terms, organizes fund raisers for the club and the annual weeks charter in the BVIs, is an accomplished Bermuda racer and a master engineer, mechanic and designer of boating things and breweries. We had a lovely and lively dinner with him before he drove us back to ILENE.
Our lay day here was just that. We did a cursory washdown of the topsides and a shopping trip to Publix (with a stop at a discount hardware store - I would have spent a lot more there but most of the tools did not say "stainless"). We went via the marinas free taxi service. Other than that I didnt do much of anything but loll around.
On our way south we went outside from the Lake Worth Inlet at North Palm Beach to Fort Lauderdale, in a single day sail. But heading north we traversed a new part (for me) of the ICW with a stop at Lake Boca, and it took two passage days.

Read More..