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

January 17, 2005

Wrapped Up With A Pretty Bow

Based on advice from winterization experts in various magazines, we decided to wrap Livin' Nauti' in a tarp that can be used for years rather than shrink-wrapping. So, a strategy was developed to utilize two tarps – a 50' x 30' and a 20' x 20'. Subsequently, the canvas and vinyls both on the bridge and on the aft deck were taken down and stored. The crew of Livin' Nauti' somehow determined that the best day to put up the tarps was on a day that the gods decided to have a freezing rain and sleet episode before the tarps were in place. What a frigging mess.

Obviously the crew had absolutely no talent for affixing two tarps over a 47' x 14' boat - especially in freezing rain. Then we were graced with a wind storm overnight. I was not surprised to receive a call about 16 hours after leaving the tarp-wrapped boat indicating that not only had the tarp been ripped off, but half of it was draped on top of the boat next to Livin' Nauti'. Luckily, the tarp that we had affixed over the bridge was intact. The large tarp was pretty much not going to work as it caught too much wind and could not be affixed in a manner that would keep it from ripping. I called Carver the next day and ordered a bridge canvas.

There are two lessons to be learned: First, put your winter covering (tarp or shrink-wrapping) on during November when it is still warm instead of keeping the boat available for the December Boat Parade. For the amount of money it will cost to outfit your boat with good decorations, you can have it shrink-wrapped. Second, pay somebody to shrink-wrap your boat. Unless your time is not worth anything and you are willing to spend a LOT of time trying to fit and grommet a square tarp over a very non-square object.

Posted by Kimberly on January 17, 2005 05:54 PM

December 06, 2004

First Year's Winterization

Start talking about the when and how of winterization early in October but then announce that you are thinking about participating in the Parade of Lights in December giving you a legitimate excuse to languish. Then proceed to buy a $500 engine/bilge room heater from West Marine that you aren't really sure will work if the temperature gets below 42 degrees because you have to test the crazy thing by spraying into this little hole with freeze spray for 5 minutes, so the temperature could be 50 degrees or 0 degrees for all that you know.

The first 10 steps of winterization seem to require lots of discussion of what the steps should be during the months of September, October, and November. Every once in awhile, one of us actually refers to the CARVER manual. Funny thing, those little issues you experienced during the summer are now cropping up during the winterization routine. Why did some CARVER engineer decide to place that thing over there instead of where it should be in the diagram? Do they just assume that everybody wants to stand down in the engine room for hours tracing things?

About half of the first 10 steps involve trips to the boat to actually perform some of the work because it seems like a very nice day to perform these duties...hmmm, why is it that all 5 of those trips ended up with us at the wall at Georgetown? The next 10 steps to winterization entailed making 10 separate trips to West Marine and Boat US - lucky for us we have both to waste our money in. I love the fact that neither West Marine nor BoatUS actually carry ANYTHING for diesel engines or generators, or that we could not have an intelligent conversation about what to order because they could not understand that it does NOT matter that the boat is a CARVER 444 and that their little computer application does not even list CARVER as a boat manufacturer, but it matters a LOT that they are CUMMINS 370B diesels and an ONAN generator and requires part number 999999 or an equivalent. BUT they had 50 million bottles of pink anti-freeze. About the time that I was ordering a case of oil filters and fuel filters online, I could think of 50 million things to do with that pink anti-freeze without it even leaving the store.

Finally the winterization begins - this plug isn't in the right vantage point, another hose clamp won't turn now that it hasn't been turned in 9 months, and amazingly the thru-hull seacocks and engine oil drain plugs are at the bottom of the engine (who knew???) requiring 9 foot long arms as the oil changers don't actually work on this because it won't pump out one tiny drop of oil, and a need for exactly 60 pounds of torque on one thing and exactly 24 pounds of torque on something else. Do we even know what torque is or did somebody come up with this so that you have to hire some type of marine expert who says just turn it until it stops?

And each activity seems to require 5 more trips to West Marine or Home Depot to buy or create some kind of tool to accomplish this one feat. Geez, whose bright idea was it to perform the winterization ourselves because gee, how hard could it be to put antifreeze in anything that can freeze? Well, that would be the same stupid captain that bought that $500 engine room heater.

Ten cases of pink stuff later and we have the water system, sanitation system, and air conditioning / heat system winterized, but still trying to figure out if we could possibly teach the three year-old how to get under that engine and unscrew that plug!!!!

Posted by Kimberly on December 6, 2004 11:00 PM