Wed Sept 23: Mattawoman Creek to Capitol Yacht Club Marina, DC

 In which we ARRIVE!!! ...

Rick here: 

The day started off great!  In one of our previous posts we mentioned scrapple...a questionable breakfast meat that is ..., well - awesome!  Our friends on Meander gave us a slice (because they did not want to eat it) and we decided that today was the day to have it for breakfast.  The plate below shows our sumptuous breakfast - scrapple, leftover french fries as a substitute for hash browns and a fried egg.  Breakfast of Champions.

We picked up our anchor and found it covered in slime, muck and, for the first time, aquatic plants! Very interesting.   I sat up at the helm station listening to NPR while Melanie did all the work raising the chain, spraying down the anchor and picking out the big wads of sea grass.   I yelled my support and she made a funny hand gesture at me. We motored our of the anchorage towards the BIG CITY. 

We passed Ft. Washington and then followed the Reagan National Airport landing path into the city.  In spite of the president, we were both pretty excited to come to the nation's capitol BY BOAT!

We worked our way up an increasingly crowded Potomac River while passing Alexandria, VA and made our way into the Capital Yacht Club.   What a wonderful marina-  and look at the view from our slip - the Washington Monument was right there.  

Upon arrival we gave the boat a bath inside and out as we had arranged to meet our friends Fabiana and Flavio for dinner, and we wanted the boat to shine!  While we cleaned we noticed a constant stream of helicopters moving back and forth up/down the Potomac right over our marina.  It was amazing how close the helicopters flew over us - we could feel the thump thump thump of the rotors.  Our tax dollars at work - and we did wonder who in the heck was flying over us and why they were so important.

Fabiana, Flavio and Carolina came and joined us for a pizza dinner at Lupo Marino in the very nice Wharf District.  This is a relatively newly redeveloped district where they have reclaimed the waterfront - again taking an older, blighted area and turning it into a multi-use area with apartments, offices, hotels and great restaurants.

We came back to the boat after dinner to give them a tour and convinced them to take a ride with us on Sunday when we head back down river.  What a pleasure to see them. They also make us feel important as Fabiana works for the IMF and Flavio the Central Bank of Brazil.

Boat name of the day:

We went to sleep with the sounds of the city, helicopters and a lot of ambient light.  In the last few weeks we have been visiting small towns with little activity and Washington DC is a real change.  We have to get used to so many people, cars, bikes and dogs.  Still it is a wonderful experience to see our nation's capital from this angle.  And everyone is wearing a mask - thank you DC mayor.