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June 01, 2005

Mattawoman Trip

Memorial Day weekend. This was my first trip taking Livin' Nauti' for a trip without Jerry as the first mate. I invited my friend, Nancy, to come on the trip with me to Mattawoman, across from the Occoquan Bay area. Livin' Nauti' was traveling with Colonel's Lady, also from DC, down to Mattawoman.

The day started out a little iffy as it was storming and both Livin' Nauti' and Colonel's Lady waited until late afternoon for the weather to clear before embarking on the trip. I have to give credit to Nancy as this was her first experience as first-mate and she did a great job of 1) taking in all the lines and fenders and stowing them on the aft deck, 2) helping to navigate, and 3) getting lines and fenders ready for raft up.

The trip was a good trip with the players changing throughout the weekend. We initially rafted up in the third cove with the 'possibility' of going back to the Dunes to join the NPYC when the rest of our crew showed up on Saturday or Sunday. The initial crew was about 3 boats from the DC area and 4 from the Occoquan area. On the second day, all the Occoquan boats left for other land-based Memorial Weekend activities and our group from the Occoquan Yacht Club showed up along with some other folks from DC. The weather was absolutely glorious and still cool so the generators did not need to run to keep the cabins cool. Everybody seemed to have a little bit of 'chef' in them over the weekend. The days were spent telling long tales over very tall drinks. The nights were spent watching a movie on Livin' Nauti' until one-by-one each person had to admit they were falling asleep and made their way back to their own floating sleeping crib.

The National Potomac Yacht Club was also at Mattawoman but back at the Dunes. The Dunes is about a 45 minute very slow very careful trek where it is not marked for navigation and there is a very small channel. However, once you get back to the Dunes, you would have no idea that you are about 30 minutes outside of DC. There is a small beach area (Dunes) and you are surrounded by trees and quiet. The Livin' Nauti' crew and the other boat's crew were not too keen about going back to the Dunes since we had various people coming to raft up on and off all weekend, so we stayed in the third cove. We vowed we would do it 'another' time. Basically, I didn't want to do it unless I followed somebody else that had done it several times in a large boat with a lot of surface for wind to push.

The third cove is pretty quiet most of the time when there are a lot of boats rafted up or anchored out. However, there is the occasional speed boater that needs to fly by either to impress or piss off. In the third cove, we rafted up keeping our stern to the shore so that people could get in the water behind the boats, but you have to be careful that you aren't sitting in the mud when it's low-tide. People are able to swim and sometimes walk to the shore, so a lot of people will bring their dogs. There are places that you can take the smaller boats and water ski, knee board, etc. There is also a place in the second cove that you can get some groceries and some gas. You can also pick up people at this location for those that did not want to come by boat. And of course, you can also coerce somebody into coming back across the Potomac to Tim's Rivershore.

On the whole, we had a good weekend and only had a few stressful times. Livin' Nauti' was the anchor boat but we had one other boat throw anchor farther out which had kept us pretty stable. When all the other boats pulled off, that's when we found that the wench wasn't pulling up the anchor and chain and the wind now wanted to swing my boat. The other rafted up boats were VERY close by so I was pretty much stuck on the bridge trying to keep the boat from swinging into other boats. Luckily, the captain of Colonel's Lady was a knight in shining armor and swam over to Livin' Nauti' and pulled up the anchor and chain by hand. The trip back up to DC was pleasant and fairly short considering that it looked like it was going to rain behind us. However, the storm finally hit 10 minutes from the dock causing white caps on the Washington Channel. Then, I was docking a boat (with a lot of wind-sail surface) on a T-head slip with the wind and rain pushing us away from the dock … and a first-mate that had never been a first-mate before. No wonder Nancy never wanted to be first-mate again on a trip!

Posted by Kimberly on June 1, 2005 09:27 AM