John H wrote:
On Sat, 2 Jul 2011 06:23:33 -0700 (PDT), wrote:


On Jul 1, 4:03 pm, John wrote:

Put in at Ft. Belvoir (Dogue Creek) and headed north to National Harbor. I hear it's a nice place to
do some shopping, if one can find a parking spot. We headed to the dock to see if the still wanted
$10/hr to tie up. Yup - still $10/hr. Told the attendant he might get a little more business if they
lowered the rates, especially on weekdays. About 200' of docking space and not one boat there. Makes
one wonder.

So we cruised up to Alexandria, tied up at the city park (free), walked to the Starbucks and got
some fortification. Took off for Pohick Bay and watched people make fools of themselves launching
and retrieving.

When we took off the GPS wouldn't come on. I was a little ****ed, 'cause it had worked great in the
driveway. While at Pohick I took the instrument panel off and played with the wires some more.
Discovered what may be a badly soldered connector on the positive wire. Hooked things up with some
alligator clips, and the damn Garmin worked all the way back. Will redo that and see if that finally
fixes a bug that's bothered me since I bought the boat.

Came back to Belvoir and found out that the 'channel' depth dropped to 2.5-3.5 feet for about a half
mile into the marina. Might have to pay more attention to the tide tables if I launch from there.

All in all, a great day on the water. The new solenoid worked splendidly.

Thanks, Tim.

Y'all have a super day.

Sounds like it was a productive day!

We're headed out in a little while to watch the boat parade. It has
become a tradition for us to go watch it, stay out until mid-
afternoon, then come back in for dinner. Then we head out again about
8pm to watch the fireworks on Lake Murray at 9:15. This year we'll
have 10 aboard for the parade... not sure how many will hang around
for the fireworks. A day of baoting and swimming with friends. Can't
go wrong with that!

Happy 4th to all.

I wish we had some nice, close fireworks to watch from the water. The DC fireworks are spectacular,
but there are so many boats there that trying to get all the way home (about 25 miles) with all the
drunks on the 'big' boats coming down the Potomac is a scary thing to do. I did it once, but never
again.

I ran into the same thing leaving the Air & Sea Show. The wakes from
the big boats was far worse than the inlet that is always rough. We saw
a guy in a small (Donnie-size) boat who had his OB break off of his
transom. They had it tied to the back with ropes to limp home.