On The Blocks at PWM…

The M/V “Our Pleasure” on blocks at Prince William Marina

Every two years we have to have our boat, M/V “Our Pleasure”, pulled from the waters of the Potomac and blocked at Prince William Marina for maintenance. Well this was the year and along with the usual cleaning and bottom paint she also need a good compounding and waxing and all the zincs replaced this time around. While she was high and dry, I also had the fiberglass guy stop by and fix a large crack in the swim platform from where we got blown into a piling during a bad storm two years ago. Oh yea, there’s always something to fix with a boat… after all, that’s what BOAT stands for you know… “Break Out Another Thousand”!!

The guys at PWM are great and along with the outstanding service and high quality of workmanship, I even got a little break on the price for being such a good customer (what ever that means). Regardless of cost, boat maintenance is a necessary evil and with out it… well lets just say that a boat won’t last long if not properly maintained. So after a little more than a week of being out of the water and up on blocks, it looks like “Our Pleasure” is again ready for another fun filled boating season on the Potomac! Enjoy the photos and check out that wax job…!!!
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Little Dylan At 3 Months…

Dylan is almost 3 months old now, so as promised, I’m adding a few more photos to the Website so that the family (and his following) may keep up with his progress. This past weekend Dylan enjoyed his first official day out on the boat! He’s not quite ready for full sun yet, but he still enjoyed being out on the water with his Mom and Dad. More photos to come soon…!!
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The Blizzard Of 2010!

I haven’t had much time lately to edit photos or make posts in my journal and once I get around to posting my next entry you’ll understand why! For now here are some photos from the big snowstorm of 2010… we’ll the first one of 2010 that is!!
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The Blizzard Of 2009!

I haven’t seen this much snow at one time in Arlington in years. I think the last time we had a snow storm of this magnitude in the Washington DC metro area I was still in high school… yea, it’s been a while!! I managed to click off a few photos during breaks from my shoveling duties and have uploaded them for your viewing pleasure. As beautiful as this area is when it’s covered in snow, I really hope we don’t get anymore this year… I’m not sure my back could handle it!
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The Macy’s Day Parade 2009!

This past Thanksgiving, Julie and I traveled to New York City to spend the holiday weekend with her family and take in some of the sights of the city. One of the highlights of this trip would be a front row seat at the starting line of the Macy’s Day Parade! Julie’s sisters place is a half a block from the starting point of the parade at 77th street and Central Park West, so since neither one of us had ever seen the parade live before (and we happened to be in the neighborhood)  we decided to check it out first hand. Wow… looks like everyone else in the city had the same idea!! I’ve added some photos from the event, but I have not had a chance to add captions yet. As you look through the photos keep in eye out for the one’s with Cindy Lauper… she was on the pink castle float! Enjoy…!!!
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The Harvest Moon…

This past Sunday on the cruise back from dinner at the Fort Washington Marina, we noticed the moon rising behind us and had to stop the boat to try to capture it. It was the harvest moon and even though the full phase of the moon was the night before (I think?), it was still a spectacular site… especially from the water! For shooting free hand from the back of a rocking boat, I’d say the photos turned out pretty good, but I really wish I’d been on a stable platform with a tripod… then they would have been awesome!
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The ‘Girls Day’ Boating Excursion…

Julie asked me some time ago, if I could make myself available to take her and some of her girlfriends out on our boat before the end of the summer. So after much planning, we decided to put together a boating day for the girls this past Saturday…. and it turned out to be a fabulous day with nothing but blue skies and sunshine! We started the day with a quick cruise out to the channel between Occoquan and Mattawoman Creek and then back to Occoquan Bay where we stopped long enough to take some pictures of the Rock Island Wreck (a very popular attraction lately!)

Then it was on to Belmont Bay where we found a nice shallow spot just off the beach to drop anchor and spend the rest of the afternoon. I admit I might have gone a little over-board with all the food (grilled shrimp, steak and veggie kabobs) but hey, it was Julies idea and from the looks on their faces I would say her friends totally enjoyed it! Anyway, it was a truly enjoyable day for all and as I said back at the dock, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again in a second… just give me a heads up!

I’ve added some photos from the day to my journal gallery… just click the link below. For those of you who where there, I will send out an email soon with the URL where you can download the full sized image files for making prints.
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First In Our Divison!

This season one of my hockey teams, The Ballston Tropics, finished with an outstanding record of 13-1-2 to put us in the top seed in our division. With only the playoffs left to go, were looking forward to a possible first for our relatively new teams history… that’s right, a championship! Here’s a few photos from the final regular season game against Team Navy. Go Tropics…!!!
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The Cayman Islands… Revisited!

Okay, so it’s been almost a year! That doesn’t mean that I’ve totally forgotten about it… it just means I’ve been a little busy!! Forgotten about what, you ask?! Well for those of you who don’t know where this is going let me bring you up to speed. In September of last year, Julie and I put together a dive trip to Grand Cayman for ourselves and a couple of friends of ours who had just finished their open-water scuba certification course.

It would be their first time diving in ‘true’ open-water and they asked me if I thought Grand Cayman would be a nice spot to break in their dive logs. My response… “Why hell yeah… there’s great diving in Cayman!!” Anyway, to make a long story a little shorter, we took our good friends Chris and Val to Grand Cayman for a week of excellent weather and better than average diving on Cayman’s North Wall.
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July 4th Fireworks in DC!

Well here we are… another year, another July 4Th and yes another boating trip up to Washington DC for the best Independence Day Fireworks show in the country (or so I’ve been told.) This year will mark the second anniversary of our new boat, so we where truly excited to be able to spend the entire weekend out on the water as we did last year. Saturday started out with the usual meeting of friends out at Belmont Bay for the pre-trip festivities and then around 4:30 we pulled the anchor and started the hour long cruise up to DC. Our goal… find a good spot to anchor for dinner and then relax & enjoy the show.

Charlie & Nichole were the first from our little group to make it under the 14Th street bridge and almost right away found an open spot in nearly the same location as we anchored last year. Just up river from the tidal basin with a great view of both the Washington Monument and the Fireworks show… who could ask for more! After getting everyone tied up and settled in for the show (and the evening) we broke out the grills for some shrimp, steak and veggie kabobs and then kicked back for one of most relaxing and pleasant evening on the Potomac River we’ve had in a very long time!
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