St. Mary’s City, MD

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On our way back down the Potomac from Alexandria, we visited St. Mary’s City located on the St. Mary River which is on the Maryland side of the Potomac River.  St. Mary’s City was Maryland’s first colonial settlement with the arrival of the passengers in two vessels, The Ark and The Dove in 1633.  It was also the first capital of Maryland and remained so for 50 years until the capital was moved to Annapolis in 1695.  The original buildings are no longer here but it is now the center of extensive archeological research and essentially a living history museum.  It is well worth a stop for a number of reasons.
It is the home of St. Mary’s College, an honors college within the Maryland public university system.  The college is situated on a beautiful bay adjacent to the historic town. The setting is out of this world!  We pulled up at the college’s docks and the dock director and an enthusiastic student oriented us to what the school and the town had to offer.  St. Mary’s College has an extensive collection of sailboats and rowing vessels. In fact, this year they hosted the annual collegiate sailing championship for which this is a perfect location!

We took our bikes out to cruise the grounds of the college and the historic area.  Although the original dwellings from the 1600’s do not remain, partial and full reproductions of many of them have been created in the spaces that they think the originals stood.  Guides in period costume regaled us with stories about life in colonial times.  Meandering through open fields, meadows and winding waterside trails was like stepping back to a more peaceful time (though the American Revolution was anything but peaceful)! The most beautiful spot was the very old cemetery behind the church that looked out over the bay  in which we anchored that evening. 


There was a reconstructed replica of the Dove, as mentioned above.  Lynn was particularly interested to see the Dove because it was a type of boat called a pinnace – a smaller vessel that often was used to transport goods in colonial times.  She has been reading the Outlander series and this is one of the boats that is featured in the third book of the series. 


Later in the afternoon, we left the college dock and anchored out in this beautiful serene setting.
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Alexandria, VA and Washington, D.C.

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On Monday, May 18, we arrived at the Alexandria City Marina (next to Founders Park )where we planned to dock for the next three nights.  Our good friends, Greg and Lynda Gallagher, who live in Alexandria (on the way to Mt. Vernon) graciously invited us to stay with them which we gladly accepted.  Lynn has known Greg since they were in 7th grade and she finds him endlessly entertaining!

You won’t see the usual D.C.  pictures here as we spent our time with our friends and revisiting a few of our favorite places, some of which are not on the traditional tourist path.

Docking in Old Town Alexandria allowed us to walk the historic streets and eat at some of their really good restaurants.  We met a good friend for lunch in Old Town.  Judith Chew brought us a unique boat gift which she and her recently departed husband, Richard, had a lot of fun with on their beautiful Hinkley sailboat.  The “fun-erator” is a specially contrived sling for shooting water balloons. We can hardly wait to use it on her stepson, Stephan and his wife, Kathy when they visit us in Montreal!

We had a few places that we really wanted to visit including the National Arboretum, the Capital Hill neighborhood where Lynn used to live and Eastern Market.  Greg loaned us his fancy new car (Fiat 500 Abarth) instructing us to be absolutely sure not to put a ding in it.  If we did, we should just “get it over with” and total the damn car!  Needless to say, we were extremely careful that day!

Lynn really wanted to see the brilliant azalea covered hillsides at the National Arboretum but we were just a little too late. Fortunately, the dogwoods were in full bloom and they were outstanding!

We drove by Lynn’s old home on Capital hill - such a cool area. Hers is in the first two pictures  The third shows homes in the neighborhood. 

We stopped at Eastern Market (a wonderful old indoor, outdoor market on Capital Hill) to buy flowers and cheese for our hostess.  Lynda and Greg were so good to us with Lynda cooking two delicious dinners after getting up at 4:30 each morning and working all day teaching school!  Thank you Lynda and I can’t believe we don’t have a picture of you with which to grace our blog!

 

Lynn spent Wednesday morning getting her hair cut while Jonny and Greg donned their cycling “outfits” and rode up to Mt. Vernon and back. What a handsome pair they made!

Afterwards we had lunch at an “old favorite” chili restaurant called Hard Times Café on King St which was within walking distance of the first home that we owned.

    

Greg dropped us off at the Metro so we could go to Dupont Circle and visit the Phillips Collection, Lynn’s favorite museum in D.C.  Out of all the outstanding museums we could visit, we chose this one and we were not disappointed in the least!

 

On Wednesday night, after a yummy pizza dinner in Old Town,  Greg dropped us off so we we could spend the night on the boat and get an early start the next morning. 

We had the most wonderful visit and look forward to the next time we can see these very special friends!

Journey to Alexandria

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On our journey to Alexandria and Washington, D.C., we stayed at an anchorage on  the Mattawoman Creek off the Potomac River and just northeast of Quantico.  In October, a local marina on the Creek hosts the biggest bass fishing tournament on the east coast. You would never know based on the few number of boats we saw in this area. We passed an interesting sight on the way which was a graveyard of wooden boats.  During World War I, the U.S. quickly built and deployed a fleet of flimsily constructed wooden steamers in response to German submarines destroying much of our shipping.  However, this new fleet was the victim of bureaucratic snafus of a major proportion and only a fraction(about 200) of the 1000 planned ships were ever completed with very few done in time to use for the war effort.  After the war, they were sold for scrap, stripped and burned to the waterline.  Those and other abandoned boats are now located in nearby Mallows Bay and are being reclaimed by nature you can see just a few remnants of their hulks when cruising by. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we proceeded up the Potomac we passed this day marker and beautiful Mount Vernon on the banks of the river.  We knew that we were almost in Alexandria!

 

 

We’ll be spending the next few days exploring our old haunts in Alexandria and D.C. and visiting some close friends there.

Olverson’s Lodge Creek Marina on the S. Yeocomico River

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We had a sunny and calm trip up the Potomac to Olverson’s Lodge Creek Marina on Friday, May 15. This marina is located off the South Yeocomico River which is one of the first rivers on the western bank of the Potomac.  We learned of this marina from Fred Olverson himself who we met at our home port at Beach Marine and then again at a luncheon of the Marine Trawlers Owners Association (MTOA).  He travels from the Chesapeake to Florida each year and promotes his marina by offering MTOA members free first night dockage.  We couldn’t possibly pass up this opportunity to see Fred again and experience what he has built over the last couple of decades.  In addition to dock space for about 200 boats, he also uses his  40 plus acres of fine waterfront property to rent space for RV owners and long term storage for boats, trailers, etc.  What a friendly and helpful operation he runs!

 

 

We had never seen a marina with so many covered docks before and you can see from the pictures how gaily decorated they were!  There were four primary docks and we were assigned a T-head (end dock) at Dock B.   Locals, as well as folks from Richmond and Fredericksburg, keep their boats here and many spend their weekends at the marina.  Every night (especially on weekends) each dock has their 5:00 “docktail hour” in which we happily participated. Our original plan was to spend one night here and continue on to Alexandria.  However, once we arrived at this unique, funky and fun marina, we couldn’t help but stay a second night.

On Saturday, we borrowed one of their courtesy cars to go into the tiny town of Heathsville for a farmer’s market that took place within an interesting historic area.  There was an old jail and tavern and local artisans displaying their wares.  Lynn was particularly interested in the old spinning wheels, looms, weaving and beautiful knitting projects that were on display.  The countryside in that part of Virginia consists of rolling pastoral hills with a variety of crops just starting to show progress.  We had fun getting lost as we drove around. 

 

It turned out that the dock we were assigned was hosting the monthly dinner for all members of the marina and guests.  So we stayed for the steak dinner (a whopping $10 for each of us) and met  many warm and friendly people.  They helped us to scope out “local knowledge”  anchorages for the the remainder of our trip up the Potomac and treated us like family.  Afterwards we strolled up the hill behind the marina and watched the sunset.  What a beautiful setting!  You can be sure that we’ll stop here again and recommend Olverson’s to  all our cruising buddies.  We left early the next morning and watched the sunrise as we headed east back towards the Potomac and onward to Alexandria, VA.

 

Edwards Creek Anchorage on the Piankatank River–Chesapeake Bay

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The journey on the Chesapeake from the York River to Edward’s Creek off the Piankatank River was something of a rough ride.  Although the day was warm and sunny, the winds were blowing 15-20 mph.  Between the winds and the confluence of the rivers at each of their mouths, it felt like we were riding a bucking bronco at times.  We had to secure everything below deck more carefully than we usually do and even had to turn our heavy teak table on the aft deck upside down so it wouldn’t fly around. We went below only briefly enough to bring lunch fixings up to the fly bridge.  Neither of us could comfortably make sandwiches in the galley!  But our boat can take a lot more than we mere mortals can, so we finally arrived safe and sound at a beautiful tucked away anchorage behind Gwynn’s Island.  Gwynn’s Island is just inside the Piankatank River and we settled in on little Edward’s Creek. 

This was a perfect place to launch our dinghy and go exploring.   We found a little seafood restaurant just next to the bridge that leads to the island. We called ahead to see if they had fresh soft shell crab and as they did, we motored over  for dinner to the Seabreeze Restaurant.  As we cruise the Chesapeake, we’ll be in search of the perfect crab cake and soft shell crab meals. We haven’t found them yet!

After dinner, we explored our anchorage and discovered that every piling had a huge osprey nest atop  it and most of them had little baby ospreys in them with very agitated osprey mothers hovering nearby. 

When we returned to Zendo, we resumed our evening obsession – watching Mad Men episodes starting with season 1.  Now that the program is ending, we are finally tuning in!