With so many outstanding museums and galleries I felt compelled to visit the National Mall, although we’d seen the lion’s share just three years ago. The Mall is two miles from the marina but I didn’t feel like bothering with a bike so I headed for the bus stop on P Street and took in some local color. I directed my steps along a weedy, asphalt-covered sidewalk strewn with broken beer bottles, aluminum cans, plastic bags and a rusted grocery cart and then hung around on the corner. I was only too happy when a bus finally showed up and delivered me to Constitution Avenue at the edge of the Mall. After traipsing through an Asian art exhibit at the Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s “Castle” (where my most memorable exhibit included a giant bird-eating tarantula), and the Museum of American History I was ready to take my shoes off and put up my tootsies. At the bus stop I waited twenty minutes beyond the scheduled time but it never showed up so I told my feet they’d have to bite the bullet and get me home. 

On Sunday Tom ventured out with me, but only because I’d searched out a Chinese buffet. It was four miles away and we debated between bicycles or trusting that a bus would show up. The bus won. They don’t pay those drivers enough. The air conditioning didn’t work, the bus was crowded, and traffic downtown was a snarl, even on Sunday. As we hoofed the remaining eight blocks to the restaurant we passed a lone bicycle wheel shackled to a post, its lock still firmly in place between the spokes. The rest of the bike had vanished. There wasn’t much other than restaurants in Chinatown so we called it a day and headed back to the marina.

Monday, June 5 - The forecast called for calm winds and smooth water and this time it was right on the nose. We worked our way down the Potomac all the way to Herring Creek near Timber Bay Marina in southern Maryland, where we shared an anchorage with three swans. The long-necked birds seemed tranquil until a fourth one joined them. Before long all four took flight, arcing around the water’s perimeter, when suddenly the original trio veered off in another direction, as if on cue, until they were out of sight. The intruder swooped down, alone again, descending like a clumsy seaplane, all fluttering feathers and webbed feet beating the water. Apparently swans are only graceful when they swim, not coming in for a landing.

Something else shared the waterway with us, making great swirls and spirals around the boat. We could never spot the critters but they played and splashed until well after dark. It may have been river otters, or maybe muskrats or nutria.

At sunrise the gray sky was slowly infiltrated with lavender, then with pink, until the sun lifted and the sky and water blazed with orange and red. I was confident of another great day on the water, though winds were predicted to pick up late in the day. Most of the time we take turns at the wheel, roughly every hour. During my second shift of the day, a little after nine o’clock, we were in the mouth of the Potomac, entering Chesapeake Bay, when the forces of nature seemed to conspire against us. The river current was going out as the tide came in, at the same time the wind switched around out of the northeast (we were going southeast), so we took it on the beam.  We really took it. For hours we rolled from side to side, so much that my legs ached from bracing my feet up against the lazarettes in order to stay in the chair. With whitecaps all around, no land in sight and nowhere to anchor even if we changed course, we toughed it out. There was no choice. We finally reached a waypoint where we could turn off and make our way into an anchorage, but we still had ten miles to go up the Piankatank River. Tom said, “It’s ten miles up the river to get to Fishing Bay but we could stay on course another 35 miles and go all the way to Hampton Roads. We still have enough time before it gets dark.” Thirty-five more miles meant five hours traveling time, minimum. I thought he’d lost his mind for sure. I told him I’d sooner insert hot needles in my eyeballs. He didn’t mention it again.

We sat tight in Fishing Bay for another day. Without much sustenance the day before – we couldn’t eat in that mess – I spent the day baking muffins and cookies and being a couch potato. It was wonderful. 

Thursday morning the water was a silver mirror, we’d had a full day of rest, and all systems were go. With calm seas all the way to Wolf Trap Lighthouse, we reached our last waypoint in Chesapeake Bay and from there on we ran close enough to the shoreline to pilot by landmarks and channel markers. We crossed our fingers, hoping that Portsmouth's south basin ferry landing wouldn’t be full and there would be room for Pura Vida. Turned out it was wide open and we had the entire dock to choose from, right at the end of High Street in the center of all the action. Harbor Fest and the parade of tall ships would begin the next day.

(click on pictures to enlarge)