Today we woke to a new reality, WINTER IS COME! Our floating home has her winter covering of shrink wrap, vinyl. The marine specialist finished up the current state last evening. He worked until 10:30pm to ensure that our major area of wrap was secure and would provide protection.
The above picture shows the Misty Lady with her winter shrink wrap, looking from the bow towards the stern. The white box in the foreground is the Dock Box which provides storage for our items, also has the electrical (50 amp), tv cable, and internet connection to the wifi provider system. Also along side this box is the fresh city water system faucets.
As you can see from this photo, it takes a lot of wrap material to cover our rather large vessel.
In this view you can also see three of the lines that secure our boat to the finger dock. The yellow hose is the pump out hose for our “black water” waste removal. Further along the side is the stairs that we use to board and leave the Misty Lady. You can just barely see the orange ball between the dock and the Lady’s side, these are known as fenders and protect the boat from bumping into the dock and causing damage to both the boat and the dock. Remember the Lady weighs over 50 thousand pounds and it wouldn’t take much for her to create a problem if she were to hit the unprotected dock side.
This open portal, shown in the above photo, is set up for the installation of a sliding door that will add more protection from cold air and wind gusts as winter set in further. The marine specialist will be installing that door on Monday, weather permitting. There will also be a clear vinyl section added to the stern area, picture of the stern below.
The “window” will be installed in the upper center of this rear section. Slightly above and over from the two bumps (hand grips for the ladder from the swim platform), and will enable us to have a nice view of activity on the other docks, any movement of other yachts, and an opening for sun light to come into the salon.
The door has been installed and it’s tracking mechanism corrected to allow our ability to enter and exit with the door sliding smoothly in both directions. The large window was installed as well, so we now have the ability to view the actions outside our boat and the additional docks behind us. This window will also allow sunlight to come through and warm the interior supplanting the electric heaters we have set up and use to ward off the Washington chill that sets in with great regularity (must be something with the hot air coming from the Capitol Building when Congress is in session, or from the White House for the same reasons).
Photo above shows that our rear window is installed and provides a great view of the Capital Yacht Club marina yachts.
Guess a couple of pictures of our two Sea Cats are in order. The first photo is of Penny, our young Tortie, in this shot she is waiting by the starboard hatch looking for her mom (Char) to come home. She senses her while she is still walking down the dock toward our yacht.
The shot below is of The Duchess, our older Grey Tabby, sitting on the bed in the Master Cabin. She is looking back toward the stairwell to the Galley area for her nemesis, Penny.
This photo below, is a view off of our starboard side, looking east toward the early morning sunrise on another beautiful Sunday morning (@6:30am). This makes any hard time aboard, worthwhile. This shot was taken last week, the 17th of November.
So, we have completed 99 percent of our winter setup for our floating condo and are preparing to settle in for the coming winter weather. A couple of nights ago we had a storm come through with winds in the upper 20 miles per hour sustained and gusts of over 45 miles per hour. A real rocking time aboard the Misty Lady, also having a symphony of the dock lines rubbing against the boat’s surfaces and themselves, keeping us awake for hours.
But it is still a Living The Dream situation.
We traveled up to West Virginia to have Thanksgiving holiday with my son Cliff, his wife Becky, our two younger grand daughters, Hattie and Cammie. My daughter Kurby came with her and Cliff’s mom. We also had members from Becky’s family there as well. Good food, good company and a very pleasant day all together. Our trip back home to the DC Waterfront went quite well also, minimal traffic and the 100 plus miles went by smoothly. The country side from Leesburg, Virginia to their home in Kearneysville, WV is filled with rolling farm land, grape arbors (lots of wine country here) and some beautifully laid out horse farms.
One last photograph, Charlotte just took this off our aft deck. It is a photo of one of our members (currently serving as Club’s Commodore), 49 foot sailboat lit up for the season. Tim is a retired Lt. Commander in the US Navy and currently works for a major government contractor company. The waters in the Channel are so still tonight they made a perfect reflection of Tim’s yacht.
Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday and lots of good times with family, friends or just good associates.
Happy Holiday to you all and we look forward to a terrific Merry Christmas season in a couple of weeks.
Misty Lady Thought and Comment 