Look whose back: I will try to bring everyone up to date with our adventures or lack thereof involving our life as live aboard mariners. When one stays in port for quite a long period of time, things kind of get away from us and we miss out on the connection of sharing with our friends and relatives. Within this blog set I will try to begin the effort of catch up for the times of myself, Charlotte, and the two fur babies, The Duchess and Penny. To keep it from being a long drawn out entry, I will break it into segments of timeline points.
Activities in the harbor: In October of 2017 we formally opened and dedicated the new CYC clubhouse, and at the same time we celebrated the Founder’s Day with 125th year of our Capital Yacht Club’s existence and had a terrific time, good food and a fabulous cake. The new Club House dedication was performed in a special ceremony by the Oldest Member and the Youngest Member (in age). A bottle of fine Champagne was dashed against the corner of the building in the old mariner tradition of dedication.
Local Area: As most of you may be aware, our berth is at the Capital Yacht Club located in the newly developed DC waterfront, known as the DC Wharf. The developers invested almost 4 Billion dollars to build this exciting area. I will try to provide some photographs in this issue.
The photo in the upper left shows a street view of the Wharf Street which runs along side the actual water itself. The blue building shown here is the Kirwan’s Irish Pub and it a true authentic Irish restaurant and bar. All of the interior, walls, bar, tables, flooring etc were all built in Ireland and shipped to DC for this restaurant. Quite a place and has libe music most nights. The upper right photo is a picture of the yacht club’s flag mast and the building behind it is the Intercontinental Hotel one of three here. The photo just below shows the Water Taxi pier. These yellow taxi boats come into the Wharf, the City of Alexandria, Georgetown, and the National Harbor. Cost is very reasonable. The final photo in this group, at the bottom is a picture of the Wharf Street in the evening. Note the shaded light posts. They keep the entire Wharf waterfront well lighted into the night hours and until daybreak.
Anyway, the District Wharf is now a fully operational area with three hotels, multiple eateries of various venue levels, a marine supply, hardware store, a CVS pharmacy, and a Ben and Jerry’s. There are also three residence buildings, two rental apartments and one of condominiums. The condos run from 500 thousand for an efficiency to over 2 million for one of the penthouse three bed units. What’s not to like? If any of you are up in this area, be sure to put the Wharf on one of your lists of Things To Do while in the area. It will certainly be worth while. Take one of the water taxi boats for a nice ride on the Potomac River, leaving from Alexandria, or National Harbor, or Georgetown to the Wharf, enjoy great food, live music and all sorts of other things to see and do. Most weekends and also special holiday days, there are multiple live performances on the various locations within the Wharf area, from the Sutton Square, to the DC Pier, and the Entertainment Pier (two of the three new piers built for this development). Plus, you get a chance to view the yachts in the Yacht Club’s dock area, especially the Misty Lady and we will be happy to wave hello.
A taste of New Orleans: This year at Mardi Gras, (Fat Tuesday, Etc), the Wharf developer decided to host a Mardi Gras event with a float parade. Since the parade street wasn’t very long, the float vehicles were golf carts, however the imagination and artistic talent of the entities submitting their float for the parade was truly amazing. The CYC float was the brainchild of the Club’s Entertainment Committee folks and was titled “20,000 Leagues Under DC”. Which I thought was pretty neat and evidently so did the folks casting ballots, because the CYC float was the first place winner. The Bride was disappointed because she had to work and would not get off work in time to make it home to the Wharf to observe and participate in the festivities. The Wharf also hosted a terrific fireworks display. It was a bit chilly however so the old Captain felt like an ancient ice cream bar by the end of the parade and I was very happy to see the break and to hustle down the ramp to the warmth of the Misty Lady’s salon.
The Winter Weather Trials: We weathered a pretty harsh winter in the Nation’s Capitol this past winter, with one 8 day period of temperatures in the high teens and low twenties. Water systems froze and we were unable to add water to the Misty Lady’s water tank, nor were we able to get our waste holding tanks pumped out. At one point, the showers in the clubhouse baths froze and even those were unusable. Finally one of our members (who was an expert in water systems, especially very cold situations) was able to prepare a work around and we were able to fill our water tanks, a group of members along with the dock master participated in filling the tanks on the yachts in our marina dock area. It was a pretty miserable several days, but it was a shared misery by all the live aboard members so we were in good company.
Even in the month of March, we had roller coaster temperatures, one day 50 and the next in the lower 30’s. One had to hope that old Mother Nature would finally take pity and allow the days and nights to warm up enabling us the pleasures of taking the Misty Lady out and head down the Potomac for a day cruise, an overnight run or even a vacation cruise to the southern areas like Hampton Roads, North Carolina Outer Banks, etc.
Misty Lady Prep Work: The Last Day of Winter (according to the calendar, not the actual weather), had come and gone so we are now on the road to Spring, Summer, etc. Of course Mother Nature has to have a last gasp and we were treated to snow, colder temps, and other fine weather problems, before it all finally faded and Spring actually appeared for real. We have the season prep for the Misty Lady underway and only one or two tasks remain before we are prepped and ready for taking the big girl out of the berth and down the river to visit locales in the Maryland/Virginia area. Especially the more historical areas in the lower Chesapeake.
The Misty Lady has had her main ship’s electrical generator repaired, (new starter and fuel pump), and is ready to supply power while we are underway. The main port and starboard engines have been checked by our diesel guy and pronounced ready for a season of cruising. We also have a second generator system but it is not currently functional and we are possibly going to look at evaluating whether to get it fired up in the next year or so. It is a 10KV gen set and our big one is a 20KV gen set. Either would supply power sufficient to run our air conditioners, the refrigerators, the dishwasher, the washer/dryer setup, the AC lights and our cooking appliances. So the big one is running fine now and we will look at the smaller one later down the line.
As I mentioned in an earlier post we had a power problem with the starboard engine alternator, and finally found a specialist who was willing to crawl into the cramped space between the engine and the bulkhead of the Lady’s hull. While back there removing the alternator (to either rebuild or replace), he discovered our fresh water line was leaking. Seems the previous owner patched the leak with some electrician’s tape and when we upgraded the fresh water system pump from a 2.5 GPM unit to a 5.0 GPM, the additional pressure caused the patch to fail and water was spewing/leaking into the engine room bilges. Tony bought the necessary repair supplies, such as connection piping and sealant to close off the leak. I wound up buying a rebuilt unit, putting the old device in the spare parts locker to eventually have it rebuilt, and Tony got it installed in quick time.
Still need to have a new LED light fixture installed in the forward companionway. (we are replacing all of the old light fixtures with the more economical LED units, especially the DC powered ones.) So, is some nice warm weather and calm kitties and the Misty Lady can once again cast off lines and tour the mid Atlantic waterways.
More in the Next Post.
Misty Lady Thought and Comment 