Washington, the Beach and the Morrison-Low's

June 20, 2008 (Fri.) – This was a very dull day. The most exciting event was my successful, flawless approach to the fuel dock at Deltaville Marina. At least I know I can still steer the boat manually with precision.

With not enough wind to power the sails, we motored up to the mouth of the Potomac and anchored for the night in peaceful Kingscote Creek.

June 21, 2008 (Sat.) – It was another day of motoring. We waited until after noon in order to use the current to our advantage. With storms chasing us upstream, we anchored around 1900 hours off Mathias Point Neck on the Potomac, out of the main channel. Gusts of nearly 30 knots buffeted us for a few minutes as we turned to anchor, but the winds subsided to under 12 knots and the storms passed us by as we sat on deck watching the lightning show at a distance.

June 22, 2008 (Sun.) – We got started at 0600 hours in order to use the flooding current. After I helped get us underway, I slept some more. Once again, it was too calm to sail, but the excitement of approaching Washington that day overpowered the tedium of motoring. We anchored at 1330 hours in Washington Channel in order to use the facilities of the wonderful, hospitable Capital Yacht Club for the next couple weeks.

After Peter re-inflated the dinghy (The patches need to be re-done.), we went to shore and checked in at the club. I left Peter to take care of boat stuff and headed off for the Smithsonian. It was wonderful to wonder around without kids or even Peter, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Without others with me, I felt more “present” and found myself interacting more with strangers in the museums and in the street, if only to nod or exchange a quick greeting. After stopping at the Castle to pick up the latest information on the museums, I walked to the Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, where I enjoyed taking my time and reading all the signage in the exhibits on Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Ball and the portrait galleries of America’s Presidents. After the museum closed at 7 p.m., I walked around the nearby streets, admiring the architecture, and then strolled through the Smithsonian’s outdoor Butterfly Habitat Garden and the Ripley Garden before returning to the yacht club.

Late afternoon thunderstorms, typical of summer, loomed around the area, so Peter stayed on the boat, since we hadn’t tested the anchor in wind, and I sat in the bar and chatted with members. Also, I booked tickets for our kids to return to us on Wednesday afternoon. They are now both old enough to fly without supervision.

Peter finally arrived around 9:30. We took showers and returned to Epicurus, where I couldn’t go to sleep until I had read over all the information I had collected.

June 23-July 7, 2008 – As the sign in front of the Smithsonian Castle says: “So many museums, so little time!” The hospitality of the members and the convenience of the location of the Capital Yacht Club made our second visit to Washington, D.C. as wonderful as the first. The great variety of experiences kept me too busy to record all our adventures so I’ll just write a brief summary for now of the highlights.

For me, the Monday and Tuesday before the kids arrived were heaven! I visited museums on my own Monday morning, spending most of my time back at the Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture (which I figured the kids would not like). Peter met me at Gordon Biersch Brewery for a delicious lunch. Afterwards, we strolled to the Museum of African Art to view the temporary exhibits.

Tuesday I started out early and had a great time wondering from place to place. I enjoyed visiting, at my own pace, the National Geographic exhibits on the voyages of Zheng He and the temples and monks of Shaolin; St. Matthew’s Cathedral; the Phillips Collection near Dupont Circle; the tower of the Old Postal Building with its great views and bells; and the Museum of Natural History, particularly the new live butterfly exhibit. Just strolling along the city streets on my own was delightful, and for the first time in a long time, I experienced just being “me,” not a wife or a mother or a family member. It was a buoyant, free feeling.

(At the Natural History Museum, I did some research and discovered that the marine mammals we had seen in the Gulf Stream en route to the Chesapeake were not right whales but pilot whales. Peter, back on the boat, had also done research, on the internet, and had come to the same conclusion. Oh, no! We lied to the Coast Guard!)

Peter met me outside the Natural History Museum and we strolled north of the Mall, looking for a place to eat. Shortly, we came to the Navy Memorial plaza, where preparations for a concert by the Navy Band were underway. We were hungry but we also wanted to enjoy the performance, so we chose to eat al fresco at d’Acqua, alongside the plaza. What a wonderful evening! The food was really, really good, and we had a wonderful table from which to watch and listen to the instrumental and vocal production, which included music from Hairspray and theme songs from old TV Shows such as The Flintstones, Green Acres, and Gilligan’s Island. As we watched, the sky darkened to a deep blue and the warmth of the day lingered in the air. The whole day was perfect! Just bliss!

The kids arrived at BWI Wednesday afternoon, so I spent the morning at museums alone. Peter met me at Union Station around noon, and we took the train to the airport to pick up Katya and Matthew, who had left Aunt Beth Ann’s with reluctance. After getting them settled back on the boat, we went to the mall for a while to visit the Natural History Museum.

The next week and a half, we went to museums every day. Usually the kids and Peter were done after a few hours, but almost every day I stayed until the last museum closed at 7:30. In addition to the Smithsonian museums on the Mall, we also went to the National Archives, took a tour of the Capitol, visited the Botanic Gardens and the Zoo, immersed ourselves in espionage at the International Spy Museum, enjoyed a concert by the San Francisco Boy Choir and Ringmasters at the Kennedy Center, spent most of a day at the Holocaust Museum, wandered around the Bhutan and NASA exhibits at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and—a highlight—saw Moliere’s The Imaginary Invalid performed by the National Shakespeare Company. Peter and I couldn’t recall ever having seen a better theatre performance, and we were all rolling in our seats with laughter. Even at intermission, Katya was laughing so hard that she could barely keep upright on the way to the lobby for refreshments.

I was particularly impressed with the Folklife Festival this year. The Bhutanese exhibit included a temple which had been constructed specifically for this event. The brightly colored and carefully carved interior was a delight to the eye. I was lucky to visit when the monks were chanting and playing their drums and horns. The whole spectrum of the culture was represented in various tents, from the Buddhist faith which is incorporated into all aspects of daily life and into much of the arts and crafts, to the manual work of a single monk meticulously creating a sand mandala, metalworking, weaving, cooking, wood turning, basket weaving, and the making of white leather boots adorned with colorful embroidered geometric patterns. All of the participants from Bhutan were genial and open, reminding us of the cultural ambiance that we had encountered in Thailand a few years ago.

IWalking across the Mall on my own after visiting the Holocaust Museum (Peter and the kids left before me), I entered the NASA exhibition area of the Folklife Festival. Having recently spent two days at the Kennedy Space Center and having already spent time at the Air and Space Museum on the Mall, I figured there wouldn’t be anything new here, but I was wrong! In fact, the items on display were not significantly different than those at the museums, although, for the most part, they could be handled, which was a novelty. However, what made the NASA exhibition worthwhile was the presence of NASA scientists and other employees who were everywhere, eager to talk about their work. The excitement was palatable, and astrophysics and space science no longer seemed too advanced or too inaccessible for those of us not formally trained in these branches of science.

The next day, I took the kids to the Folklife Festival, because it truly was a unique opportunity to get a glimpse of another, little-known culture (Bhutan) and to learn about the work of NASA at a more personal level. There were a lot of activities for the kids to do at the NASA displays, earning decals from various space station missions. If we didn’t stop to talk and ask questions, the NASA folks grabbed us to share their knowledge and enthusiasm.

We went to the zoo on the Fourth of July to avoid the crowds on the Mall. In the early afternoon, we joined the members of the Yacht Club for a barbecue and then just relaxed on the boat for in the late afternoon. After nearly two-weeks sighting-seeing and soaking in all the information and culture that I could, I was exhausted and had to nap. My brother and sister-in-law, Randy and April, and their baby Kes from Charlottesville joined us on the boat in the evening to watch the fireworks over the Washington Monument.

We were going to leave the day after Independence Day, but, not unusually, we dawdled in a nice place. I went back to the Sackler and Natural History Museums for a few hours. Also, we needed to pump out the holding tank and take on water, so we docked at the yacht club Saturday evening. By the time we took care of all our chores on Sunday, it was already afternoon, so we delayed our departure until Monday morning, which actually turned out to be closer to noon.

July 7-11, 2008 (Monday-Friday) The new mainsail with the battens which had finally been delivered to D.C. was in place. We were fortunate that on the trip down the Potomac, the wind conditions were right and we got a chance to try it out. In fact, we anchored on Monday evening without the engine and even pulled up anchor under sail the next morning. The new sail is great (and makes the foresails look a bit dirty!).

On Tuesday, we stopped just downriver from Colonial Beach, by Horsehead Cliffs, to hunt for fossils. The layers of compressed clay held mostly fossil imprints. They were distinct, detailed and numerous but hard to excavate without making them crumble. We ended up chiseling off a few large hunks of the mudstone to preserve the imprints and have a few artifacts for our collection.

We got underway early on Wednesday and had excellent sailing conditions. We made it all the way to Eastern Bay before both the approaching sunset and, more ominously, an approaching thunderstorm, persuaded us to drop anchor at the mouth of Tilghman Creek. On Thursday morning, there was little wind. After valiantly trying to sail for an hour or so, we dropped the main and motored to St. Michael’s and up Leed’s Creek to find a secure anchorage for leaving the boat for a week.

Later in the afternoon, we took the dinghy further upstream to enjoy the warm welcome always available at the Morrison-Low’s home. We were sorry to learn that Anne’s mother, a wonderful woman who lived part of the year with them, had passed away earlier this year. However, we were delighted to be regaled with humorously told stories of John’s eightieth birthday celebrations and the village gossip.

On Friday morning, I picked up a rental car and ran some errands while the kids immersed themselves in cable TV and the internet. I packed up everything we needed for the annual beach vacation in the afternoon, and we were just about ready to join my family for another week of idle busy-ness, the traditions of miniature golf, the boardwalk, dinner at Phillip’s Crab House, shopping and endless games of pinochle on the beach and family games—all accompanied by food, food and more food.

July 12-19, 2008 (Sat.-Sat.) Peter shuttled everything from Epicurus to the Morrison-Low’s dock on Saturday morning and packed the car while I cleaned the boat. We used pool noodles as racks to strap the kayak on top of the car. This was a protracted job, hardly worth the effort since we ended up only using the kayak one morning. It is amazing how little time there is to do anything at the beach when we really do nothing at all!

My good friend Lori, who is a diplomat in Japan, and her two small children joined us Tuesday through Friday at the beach, making our family vacation their first stop of six weeks of home leave. It was a good chance for them to recover from jet lag, and there were enough of us around—22 to be exact—that she had plenty of help with the kids.

The weather was really perfect the whole week. There was not a drop of rain, it was never too hot or too cold, and there was a light breeze—just enough to be pleasant and not enough to blow the playing cards off the tables on the beach.The water temperature was good also, cool but not frigid. Because of storms in the Atlantic, the waves were rough but not it was still possible to body surf and jump over or under the crests. Rip currents were a bit of a problem, and both Katya and then Matthew had to be saved by the lifeguards. (A lifeguard also towed me in. I was actually fine, but I had stayed near Katya until the lifeguard reached her, so the lifeguard felt compelled to help me also.)

We drove back to Tunis Mills and the Morrison-Low’s late Saturday, stopping to pick up pizza for the kids. They stayed home to watch TV and use the internet while the four adults went to a local Italian restaurant to enjoy a particularly delicious meal and bottle of wine and great conversation. Since it was hot, we slept at the house that night instead of returning to the boat, which had been closed up for a week.

July 20, 2008 (Sun.) – The Morrison-Low’s are so welcoming, that it is difficult to leave them—so we didn’t! Peter went to West Marine and I went out for groceries in the afternoon. I forced the kids, under protest, to do a bit of left-over school work, but mostly we relaxed and prepared to depart. Since we had decided not to leave until Monday, we just spent the night in their large and comfortable house again.

July 21, 2008 (Mon.) – Well, we meant to leave, but we didn’t. Peter and I spent time on the boat hauling up excess blocks of lead from the forecastle to donate to the nearby Maritime Museum, and I hauled him up the mast in the heat of the afternoon so that he could adjust the lazy-jacks. So, Anne came home from work to find us STILL here, but we enjoyed a wonderful dinner together and lively conversation.

July 22, 2008 (Tues.) – In earnest, I began getting ready to move back onto the boat and depart, washing sheets and towels and packing our bags. Without the kids being present, Peter and I discussed our plans to cruise to New England and quickly agreed that there is not enough time left before school begins to really enjoy the sights. In addition, there appears to be a series of storms developing in the North Atlantic that may make traveling by sea difficult over the next few weeks. So we decided to leave Epicurus somewhere in the Chesapeake again for the remainder of the hurricane season. Of course, Katya was pleased with the news that we will be going home soon, and Matthew was ecstatic.

Peter immediately began to contact people to get leads on brokers for selling the boat and to work on finding a good place to leave her in the water so that she can be shown to prospective buyers. John mentioned a friend in the area who sells boats, so an appointment was made for 5 p.m. Did we leave on Tuesday? What do you think? Meanwhile, the remaining bits and pieces of schoolwork get accomplished, with geography being wrapped up for good in the afternoon.