Pleasure Boaters Launch Season of Floating Tailgates
Blessing Ceremony in Occoquan Bay Lures Growing Number of Vessels

By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 7, 2001; Page B07

A speedboat roared past the starboard side of the 50-foot motor yacht Cocolobo yesterday morning. The little boat plowed a foamy white trench in the waters of the Occoquan River, inciting shouts of indignation. "No wake! No wake!" cried the people on the yacht.

The speedboat had violated a local rule limiting speeds and turbulence in certain areas. "This is one of the problems with boaters who do not have an education in what they are supposed to do," said Jim Ball, a retired Air Force colonel who is the founder and coordinator of the Occoquan River Maritime Association.

Ball and other Washington area residents created the association to deal with problems brought on by a local boom in pleasure boating. But yesterday, at the third annual Occoquan Blessing of the Fleet, they gathered in Occoquan Bay to celebrate the positive side of their favorite pastime.

To mark the start of the 2001 boating season, Cocolobo, and dozens of other gleaming white vessels, moved slowly past the express cruiser Brecon Ridge II as a Navy chaplain, standing on its rear deck, repeated the words used in previous centuries to send fishing fleets on their way.

"May God bless and keep the vessel Cocolobo and all who sail aboard her," Capt. Russell Gunter shouted as the triple-decked, $400,000 Chris Craft motor yacht slid past.

By all appearances, the people on the Cocolobo already felt well blessed. The owners and crew of the boat -- Rudy Zimpel, a builder, and his wife, Cookie, a sixth-grade math teacher at Beville Middle School in Prince William County -- began their marriage 28 years ago with a trip to the Virgin Islands on a 35-foot sloop. They have had boats ever since.

When their daughter Molly graduated from Prince William's Hylton High School and left for James Madison University two years ago, they decided to live full time on the Cocolobo. They spend much of their days cruising local bays and "being thankful for every breath that we take and for life," Cookie Zimpel said.

Their guests for yesterday's Blessing of the Fleet were Ball and several local elected officials, who were excited about the expansion of boating prompted by rising incomes, increasing numbers of retired residents and cuts in federal and local boat taxes.

The Occoquan blessing is one result of the proliferation of watercraft. Tom Coldwell, a retired Navy captain serving as spokesman for the event, said about 1,500 boats are based on the Occoquan, twice as many as a decade ago. So area boaters decided to have their own blessing rather than burn $70 in gas on the 45-mile round trip to a ceremony that has been held for decades near the Washington waterfront.

Boating in the Washington area is a leisurely appreciation of all of life's wonders, the boaters say. They gather with other boaters -- called "rafting up" -- in the late afternoon to chat, eat, drink and watch blue herons soar over the water.

"You get away from land," Coldwell says of his trips with his wife, Mary Ann, in their 40-foot Silverton cabin cruiser Shalimar. There's "a sense of freedom, although we take our cell phones with us."

"You drop the hook, and you have the most beautiful back yard you can imagine," he said.

But there are irritations. Some of the larger boats devour nearly two gallons of gasoline every mile. "Friends of mine said they got flowers from Texaco every month," Coldwell said.

Uneducated new owners, like the one in the wake-churning speedboat, can be troublesome. And the bottom of the bay and its attached waterways are, in some places, not as deep as they ought to be, Ball said.

The boats arriving for yesterday's blessing followed the marked channels, but the Cocolobo still lightly scraped the bottom once, and three other boats grounded and had to be rescued by tugboats. The association has helped secure $1 million in federal funds to dredge the more hazardous sections of the Occoquan channel, Ball said.

Cookie Zimpel said the dredging will come not a moment too soon. "We won the Bent Prop Award last year," she said. "We spent the most money -- $7,000 -- on repairs."