 |
July 2007 |
Jump to updates:
31 July - Washington DC
From Fishing Bay in the Chesapeake we continued on towards Washington sailing by day and anchoring in various different anchorages at night, up the Potomac to anchor when we anchored in the Yeocomico River the next night, the river thinned as we got nearer to the end and we were able to anchor just outside the main channel another night then arrived the next day in Washington. We thankfully never run into anymore storms along the way but think we must have done more motoring than ever before, the wind seemed to be constantly against us and the current rarely seem to be in our favor either. We generally left the anchorages at 6am and anchored by 6pm so fairly long days of motoring. Going up the Potomac was nice though, no large ships, very calm waters and deep channels and not much in the way of traffic. It was pretty amazing to be able to anchor in the centre of Washington, you could see the Washington Monument from the boat and everywhere was in walking distance. There area few Marinas at the top of the river and we paid to for dingy dockage in the Gang Plank Marine, $10 per day with use of the facilities, it was lovely to get to use a proper shower again and get some laundry done.
There is soo much to do in Washington and the majority of it is free, it's a lovely place, lots of parks and greenery and great to cycling. We went on a real mission to see as much as we could in the time that we had, Stuarts parents are coming to visit and we will need to pick them up in New York at the end of the month so need to get a move on. We managed to get around most of the main museums, and parks that we wanted to see. The first day we did the WWII, Lincoln, Korea and Vietnam Memorials, all around the Washington Monument and the Reflection Pool.
Click here to see pictures of the memorials
We met another couple of boaters from Colorado and they asked if we would like to go to Capitol Hill with them and have a tour of the Senate. Any one can get a group tour but if you are an American citizen you can go to your State Senators office in the buildings and ask for a private tour. So that's what we did. It was really interesting to wander around the building especially as I was reading a John Grisham Novel at the time that was based on a Senator running for President, it made me feel like I was in the book! It had you imagine all the politics, truth lies and scandal going on there behind closed doors! It was strange as after 9-11 we thought security would be ridiculously tight in Washington but we barely saw one policeman, and although everywhere you go you get a bag search its really not very through. Entering the Senate Buildings they put your bag through one of those airport x-ray machines, no one seemed to notice that I had a Swiss Army knife in my bag!!! (I must admit, that I had forgotten it was in there too, it's generally there for emergency cheese sandwich making missions and beer and wine opening!) I got in and out of that building twice without anyone noticing it. It did scare me a little when I saw the signs that said, any thing found on your person that could be used as a weapon could get you sent straight to jail! I did hand it in at the Colorado Senators office though just to be on the safe side, they weren't particularly surprised and said they had a guy in on a visit a week before who had obviously seen the sign too on the tour around and pulled a flick knife out of his pocket and said, do you think they would class this as a dangerous weapon?! So so much for tight security!
We cycled downtown and went to see the Ford's Theatre where Lincoln was assassinated, whilst we were waiting for our appointment at the Senate. Afterwards we went to the Botanical Gardens.
Click here to see the pictures of Capitol Hill
Next we did the Hirshorn Museum a really nice Art Gallery with some really interesting pieces, we got to see Man Ray famous Blue Baguette, I lent in too close to look at it and the alarm went off, I though they were going to throw me out, but it turned out it was quite a common occurrence. There was a fantastic video instillation by Takeshi Murata, with crazy monsters merging with psychedelic pixels throbbing with the music. I got to see my first James Turrel which I was very excited about and there were loads of other really famous pieces.
Click here to see pictures of the Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
We then checked out the Air and Space Museum, which contained similar things to the one we visited in Hampton although was larger scale and better looked after. Stuart was very happy seeing all the planes, rockets and bombs. My only reason for being there was to see Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz's ruby slippers! The American History museum was closed at the time so they moved a few of the exhibits to the Air and Space Museum so people could still see them.
Onto the Natural History museum which was really good and very large, lots of stuffed animals, amazing fossils and a huge gem section that included the enormous 45 carat Hope Diamond (a bit too bling bling for me though!)
Click here to see the pictures of the National Hstory & Air & Space Museums
We were a little disappointed with the American Indian Museum, it seemed have more information on what the Indians were doing today rather than the history and what they are doing today isn't that dissimilar to what the rest of us are doing!
The National Art Gallery was fantastic and had a load of really famous panitings and sculptures, it was just a shame that we only got to see one of the buildings we thought it was going to shut at 7pm only to be kicked out at 5pm.
Click here to see the pictures of the American Indian Museum & National Art Gallery
Finally our last day we rode the bikes down to Arlington Military Cemetry and saw General Lees old house and the changing of the guards at the grave of the unknown soldier.
Click here to see the pictures of Arlington Military Cemetry
Next stop New York to meet up with Stuarts parents.
14 July - Chesapeake Bay
After my parents left, we caught up with Jack and Suzie again on Pine Island, they took us out shopping and we managed to pick up a couple of barely used second hand mountain bikes for $40 for the both of them! We thought that this may help us out and about in America where the supermarkets can be miles away from where you leave the boat and there is no public transport, so we were pleased with our buy. We finally left a couple of days later and headed out to sea and up to the Chesapeake. We took the Intra Coastal down to Sanabel then caught the lift bridge out to sea.
We sailed / motored for 2 days down to Marathon where we anchored for the night then headed off again first thing the next morning. We cut through the keys here under the 7 mile bridge then began heading North, we managed to pick up the golf stream and made on average 6-7 knots. Its a very busy place and there were lots of large boats around, the Coast Guard also likes to sneak around at night with no lights on which scared the living daylights out of me. I had been keeping my eye on a couple of tankers and a fishing boat when all of a sudden out of no where comes a huge coast guard vessel towards us with no lights on! I was not very impressed.
We did another night at sea then stopped off at Palm Beach for a night as we needed to pick up some more fuel. Palm beach is apparently a very exclusive area with multi million dollar houses up and down the river, I'm not too sure I would want to pay a few million for a house that is built right on top of your neighbor and over looks a power station and a building site and is full of idiots on jet ski's at the weekend?? That may just be me though??
After hitting the bottom one to many times trying to get into the Sailfish Marina for fuel, the dizzy woman on the radio had said its fine to get in there is plenty of water in the small channel, there wasn't at all. We turned around and headed toward another Marina/Boat Builders called Rybovich, we didn't realise until we got in there that they are used to dealing with much larger customers than us! The place didn't have many boats tied up but the ones they did have were worth millions and all around 100ft or longer!! We thought they would laugh at us and send us packing but they were brilliant. A guy ran to the dock and helped us with the lines, was very chatty, sorted us out with water and fuel and even said if we wanted to pop off to a marine store to get some bits we could leave the boat there free of charge for a couple of hours. We declined but come away with 4 free bags of ice! We have never had such an amazing response from a marina before and would highly recommend it.
Click here for pictures of the journey to the Chesapeake
We headed out from here for the long stretch up to the Chesapeake. We were in the Gulf Stream in no time and managed to averaged 7-10 knots all the way up to Hatteras. We had to motor some of the way and we got a little over confident about how fast we were going and were depressed if we went under 8 knots! In normal circumstances we are happy if we can do 5! The only problem with the Gulf stream is a bit of a bugger to leave it! It doesn't really want to give you up. As we reached Cape Hatteras we were a little concerned that we wouldn't be able to get out in time (watch out, next stop England!!) But with a little perseverance fairly rough seas and less speed we finally crept out and straight into the arms of a waiting storm! Luckily it didn't contain much wind but we did get a lot of rain, thunder and lightning and was glad to get out at the other end. It was only after we were safely anchored up in Hampton Roads in the Chesapeake that Stuart told me that Cape Hatteras is know as a bit of a grave yard, that area is notorious for bad seas and many a large ship have sunk there!! I'm very glad I didn't know this before hand!
We managed to get into the bay and anchored off of Fort Monroe on or 5th day out from Palm Beach roughly 700 Nautical Miles away. So we didn't do too badly. Once in Hampton we found a tiny anchorage opposite the Public Piers off of the town, it was a good place to stay, the Public Piers dingy dock was free and the whole place was very boater friendly. We spent longer here than we had intended to, but got to see a lot. We spent a day at the Science and Air Museum in the town, and checked out the Cousteau Society where we saw pictures of his boat inside the Blue Hole in Belize and we could point and say we have done that!!
We rode our bike's for the first time over to Newport News to the Mariners Museum. Oh yes luckily for Stuart there were a lot of Maritime Museums here (not so lucky for me!!) This one was really good and had something for everyone, the main reason Stuart wanted to go was to see the exhibition on the USS Monitor. Divers have recently recovered the turret from the Civil War ship that sunk in storms off of, yes you guessed it, Cape Hatteras, and it is on display here. The actual turret itself is a bit of a let down when you finally get to see it as you can't see it at all! Just a murky shape in a large tank that can only be viewed from the top but the build up was very good.
The cycle to and from Newport News is another thing entirely, if you see signs that say cycle route in America be very skeptical. We ended up cycling on roads that had 6 lanes of traffic (one way!) and far too many right hand turn only lanes so you had to get in there with the traffic if you didn't want to turn right. We stupidly thought that a cycle route would mean that they had a little lane for cyclists, but apparently not, it just means that you are allowed to cycle on the road! Not a very pleasant journey at all and with around 13 miles each way, I personally saw enough traffic to put me off for a while!
Click here for pictures of our time in Hampton
After this we decided to check out the buses, these worked out to be pretty good, although most of the locals did like to have a good moan about them. $1.50 a journey but this included transfers, a ticket that allows you to change to a different bus to get to your destination and gives you a 2 hour or so time limit, so you can get pretty far on $1.50. We took the bus up to Norfolk (there are a lot of English named places here, Portsmouth is another one near by) to yet another Naval Museum where the USS Wisconsin is moored. The museum was much smaller than the last and you were only allowed to walk the deck of the Wisconsin but this is because the ship is still in reserve. They need to keep inside ready and in working order just incase it is ever needed again (which is fairly doubtful). That was a nice day out and we met some fun people on the buses, and don't worry I am going to make sure I drag Stuart around a load of Art Museums in Washington and New York!
Hampton was a nice little place with very friendly locals, we made a load of new friends in Good Fella's pub and would recommend anyone to have a beer in there and sit at the bar. Within 5 minutes you will have made some new friends, who will introduce you to other bars or buy you drinks until you can no longer stand!
Time has come to head on to Washington though and we are currently motoring all the way up the Potomac river to get there. We managed to do a little sailing to the river mouth but since we have been in here no mater what direction we turn the wind is always on the nose, how can that possibly be??? I get the impression that if we were to turn 180 degrees now it would still be on the nose!! This journey is taking us a lot longer than we first anticipated and we aren't getting anywhere quickly. It has taken us 3 days so far and we still have another 70 miles to go! (At least another 2 days.) We have been stopping each night as we don't think it would be wise to travel at night there are quite a few obstructions that you come across that aren't noted on the charts. We have spent the first 2 nights anchored in rivers off of the main river which are very pleasant. The scenery is very different to where we have been, there is a lot more greenery here and trees that wouldn't look out of place at home.
Our only problem has been running into the worst storm we have been in yet on the way into our first anchorage. We knew it was coming but was hoping that we would make it into the anchorage in time, but no such luck. We were coming along the channel following the markers and it just hit, torrential rain and very high winds, luckily we had taken the sails down or they would have been torn to shreds, the wind was so strong we couldn't even point the boat into it so we had to run with it. Luckily there wasn't any real shoals where we were and we had the way point for the first marker up on the GPS, all we could do was turn our backs to the wind and head back to it, with the engine at idol the wind was pushing us forward at 5 knots, we couldn't see a meter from the boat as the rain was so hard so had no visual idea of where we were. Thunder and lightning was all around and the seas picked up surprisingly so for a secluded bay. We made it back to the marker and eventually managed to point into the wind which had died down a little and motor on the spot until it passed over which was only about 45 minutes after it started so things could have been a lot worse in a lot more ways.
We really should be in Washington this time, by the time this goes live!