D's Notebook

Tag: boat (Page 2 of 2)

Finally On The Water

June 28, 2016 /

We’ve been lucky through our first two lake weekends of the summer. Excellent weather both times: hot, but not oppressive, and free from rain. Excellent company both times, kids relatively well behaved each weekend.

This past weekend was a little extra special, though. L finally went tubing.

To reset, despite being our most athletic, most daring kid, L has had issues on boats and water. It all goes back to a ride she took on a friend’s boat four years ago. She got a little freaked out by the speed. She was just three at the time, so that was understandable. When we got our boat, she hated even going for slow rides. That first summer she cried almost every time we forced her to go. While she eventually made peace with the boat itself, she wanted nothing to do with tubing. The only time she would tube was if we put her on in the no-wake zone and puttered along at idle speed. We gently pushed her to join a friend or older relative for a fast run, but she always said no.

We figured eventually she would cave, and that finally happened this weekend. Two of our guests were classmates and soccer teammates of hers, so maybe that’s what did the trick. But Saturday, when we were figuring out the order for the older kids, she informed me that she was going, too.

I took it fairly easy on her and her partner. No whipping them outside the wake, or taking the turns fast. Pretty much straight and steady. And she had a great time.

She took it to the next level on Sunday. One of our guests brought a kneeboard for the kids to use. After watching a couple other kids give it a shot, L was ready to try, too. It took four tries for her to get up and stay up, but then she did a complete lap pf the lake with no problems.[1] We’re so happy that she finally broke through this barrier!

She wasn’t the only one to kneeboard. Both M and C took turns and got up immediately. Both boarded exactly to their personalities. M kept the board straight and under control the entire time. She didn’t attempt any daring moves, other than to occasionally let go of the rope with one hand to wave. C was all over the place. The board would shimmy to one side and then the other. We couldn’t tell if she was trying to spin it, or if she was just giggling so much that she couldn’t control it. She aimed it at the wake and then cut back. She looked like she had been boarding for years.

So naturally the girls want us to buy a wake board now.

L also kept catching fish like a fiend. She caught 12 our first weekend of the summer. Last weekend she caught at least 8 more. She even knew what kind of bait to buy. We walked into a store Saturday morning and she told the kid behind the counter that she wanted some nightcrawlers. Obviously her grandfather got to her, because S and I don’t know the first thing about fishing.

  1. Our lake is pretty small, so we’re talking about 10 minutes to make a lap at kneeboard speed.  ↩

First Weekend At The Lake

June 13, 2016 /

The first lake weekend of the summer was a success. It was just about a perfect weekend, weather-wise. It was up in the high 80s, low 90s both days without being too sticky. The water was still surprisingly cool, but was refreshing given the air temp. Saturday night was clear and beautiful.

We had three families from St. P’s down, so nine kids total. They were all pretty well behaved for the most part. Only one of all those kids was fired up about tubing fast. Somehow over the winter both M and C lost their love of jumping waves and going fast. They preferred to ride with other kids that wanted me to keep it fairly straight and gentle. The one wild kid kept begging me to “go so fast that you kill me.” I didn’t set any speed records, but on her final trip of the weekend, I did get her airborne and sent her flying, which she absolutely loved. It was really good to be out in the boat again.

L still has no desire to get in a tube. But she got a new fishing rod a couple weeks back, and one of our guests loves to fish. So those two spent hours fishing. On Sunday they took our little peddle boat across the cove to a nice, deep, sheltered spot and spent well over an hour casting and catching. I think L ended up catching 12 fish for the weekend.

The dads all closed out Saturday night sitting by the lake, drinking bourbon, and smoking cigars until well after midnight. I don’t think I had smoked a cigar in a decade? A dozen years? Since my bachelor party? It had been awhile.

We jump into the first full week of summer at home with both feet. M is volunteering at St. P’s VBS all week to earn her first middle school service hours. We have two swim meets and practices the other two days. And a long list of household chores and errands to knock out.

LVS Weekend #1

May 10, 2016 /

Last weekend was a very important one on the family calendar: the opening of the Local Vacation Spot (LVS for you newbies) and the putting-in of the boat. These weekends are often good for a laugh or two, as S and I bump up against our many limitations in mechanical knowledge and ability.

I’m happy to say the weekend was an almost complete success. We picked the boat up and got it down to the lake without incident. We got the boat into the water faster than we ever have before. It started right up and ran just fine as I took it back to the dock. And we brought in enough fuel to ensure we didn’t run dry on our one trip around the lake later in the day.[1] Oh, and the house was still standing and fully operational. We went entirely too long without coming down to check on it and I was a little nervous about what we might find.

Now the weather was not great. We dodged showers off-and-on Saturday. But there were enough breaks so I could get the yard mowed and S and family got our new solar lights installed on path down to the water. After some steadier rain rolled by, the sun burst forth just in time for us to load all our guests onto the boat and take it for a leisurely lap. I do enjoy the rare days we’re out in the boat and A) not many other people are on the water and B) there isn’t much wind so the lake is nice and calm. I like these days because you can go fast!

We also had a most excellent fire that I lit around noon to drive away the bugs and was still going strong when we scurried inside to avoid a downpour around 10:00 that evening. A lot of limbs, big and small, had fallen since our last visit sometime last fall.

Sunday was a complete washout, but that allowed us to get the house all cleaned up and ready to go for the summer.

There was one surprise that greeted us, though. As I approached our dock for the first time, I saw a goose swimming toward me rather intently, honking away. Then I saw there was another goose sitting in the mulch bed on the edge of our property, about 10 feet from our boat slip. Yep, we have a Mother Goose of our own!

She was not thrilled when we came down to pick up sticks, open up the shed, or when I mowed within about 20 feet of her. She also did not enjoy me pulling the boat into the dock a little later. She stretched her neck out as long as it would reach, low to the ground, and followed every movement of the person closest to her. She looked like a damn snake. But she remained on her nest.

Mother Goose
Mother Goose

Later in the day I went down to check on her and caught her away from the nest. I was able to get within about 10 feet or so. I saw four or five large eggs in the nest she scraped out of the mulch. When we took our lap on the boat and checked out some other coves, we came across a family of ducks and ducklings, and two geese with their goslings. ’Tis the season and all.

Sunday, when it came time to cover up the boat before we left, I decided I needed a little barrier between me and Mama. So I took one of our porch chairs and placed it between the edge of the boat where we would be attaching the cover and the nest. Homegirl hated me getting that close. She popped up and hissed, but never made a move toward me. I kept one eye on her the entire time we were snapping the cover on, but she just did her weird, snake-neck thing.

Because of sports and birthdays and school and S’s schedule, we won’t be down for a weekend for at least three more weeks. Hopefully between now and then there is a successful hatching and the geese decide to move to the opposite side of our cove, where there are two unoccupied houses. I don’t think they’re going to enjoy it when we start having people down in early June.

  1. The gas station at our marina does not open until Memorial Day weekend, so you have to bring your own gas in until then. The perils of being on a very small lake.  ↩

End Of The Boating Season

October 14, 2014 /

One last (brief) boat ride for the year. Which was preceded by one last boating adventure for the year.

Saturday we planned on getting the boat out of the water for the year. We actually went down Friday night so we could get an early start and have everything wrapped up before I covered a sectional soccer game in the afternoon.

Bright and early we got up, got the trailer hooked up, the girls in life jackets, and headed down for the quick jaunt over to the marina. Except, when I turned the key, nothing happened. It had been in the back of my mind all week that the battery might be low since we A) hadn’t started it in six weeks and B) it’s been rather chilly for several weeks. Now, did I borrow, or even buy, a battery charger to protect against these thoughts? No, I did not. And I had even borrowed an air compressor to fill the tires on the trailer, so I had the chance to grab a charger as well.

Only one lake neighbor was home, and he did have a charger that he warned did not work very well. I gave it a shot, but after half an hour there still wasn’t enough charge to turn the engine over. Time was running short so we abandoned the task for the day.

Sunday we borrowed a better charger and I went and bought a new battery, just in case ours was completely dead. Then yesterday, after the kids got dropped at St. P’s, we hustled back down to try to get everything done. It was pouring for our entire 75 minute drive. I was not looking forward to standing out in the rain while attempting to charge, and potentially change, a battery and then drive a boat through it. But just as we arrived, the rain stopped and it slowly began to clear.

I hooked the charger up and let it run while we again hooked up the trailer and got everything ready to go. After half an hour, I turned the key, and the engine at least tried to start. A pause, another twist of the key, and the engine sputtered to life. Whew!

By now the sun was out, it was in the mid–70s, and it was a thoroughly glorious day. As I slowly navigated our cove toward the main channel, it became an absolutely perfect day to be on the lake. And I was the only boat out there. I really should have taken a lap around at high speed one last time, but instead I went straight to the marina, pulled up onto the trailer, and our first summer as boaters was officially over.

Next was the really fun part: driving the trailer all the way back to Indy (about 45 minutes) to drop it off at the place where it would be winterized and stored until May. Keep in mind, I’ve never pulled an empty trailer before, let alone one with 3000 pounds of boat on top of it. And the first 20 minutes of the drive are through winding, narrow, country roads with lots of hills, blind turns, and crazy locals who drive much faster than the speed limit while straddling the center line. There’s not much room for error.

Fortunately, since it was a Monday, there was hardly any traffic. I kept it out of the ditch and away from on-coming traffic. I gave myself plenty of space to slow down once we hit the busier highway back to the city. And we made it to the boat center without incident.

We learned a lot in our first five months as boat owners. And I’m sure we still have a lot more to learn. We know not to trust the gas gauge. How to get it in and out of the water. By the end of the summer I had figured out how to drive the boat pretty well, if I may brag a bit. Each of our last two big weekends with friends we had guests who have boats of their own, and daredevil boys who are used to acting crazy behind them. Both times I whipped those kids around enough on the tube that they were screaming with joy and shouting how awesome the ride was when their turns were over. I think I came a long way from the first half of the summer when I just went straight and fast.

We hope those of you who visited this summer will come again, and those of you who didn’t make it accept our invitation to share a weekend with us next summer.

Rookie Mistakes

June 2, 2014 /

When we jumped into this owning a pleasure craft thing, we knew there would be a significant learning curve involved. Neither of us had spent more than a few seconds steering a powered craft on water. Neither of us is mechanically minded, meaning we can’t quickly diagnose and then fix problems. Then there’s the matter of educating ourselves while making sure everyone on board stays safe. Kind of takes the pleasure out of pleasure craft if you dwell on it.

This past weekend we had a couple rookie mistakes.

When we took the p.c. out for the first time Saturday, our plan was to head straight to the marina to fuel-up. The fuel gauge showed that a quarter tank remained, but gauges on the water are notoriously unreliable. Still, we figured there was plenty of fuel for the quick jaunt across to the pump.

Wrong!

Our engine died inside our cove, just before we left the no wake area. It was a quiet day on the lake, but luckily some folks on a pontoon nearby were nice enough to tow us over to the marina. We filled the tank up, I cranked the key, the engine caught, sputtered for a few seconds, and then died. I tried again, same thing. I let it sit for a moment, then tried a third time, same result. We called the lake patrol over and got a tow back to our dock. The girls were not pleased. They expected to be tubing by now.

When we arrived home the engine did catch and hold and we were able to dock safely. Apparently we weren’t just out of gas, we were really out of gas, and it took awhile for the new fuel to cycle through the system. We made it out for a tentative run later in the day, but I’ll admit I was a little spooked. It’s one thing to run out of gas in your car on the side of the road. It’s another to do so in a boat on the water. Even on a small lake like ours, you are kind of helpless.

On to Sunday. We had some family down for their first ride. We cruised around a bit, stopping in the bigger coves to show them the sights. The girls complained of being hot, so we found a quiet spot and let them jump in to get wet. As they climbed back in and dried off, I decided to take a quick dip, too. In the two years we’ve had the LVS, I’ve never jumped into the water as I would off the side of a swimming pool. Reason? I don’t want my sunglasses to go flying. I’ve always eased into the water backwards off a ladder to keep the specs safe. For some reason I lost my mind and decided to jump straight into the water.

Guess what happened? My glasses flew off and quickly sunk out of my limited sight.

Fan-freaking-tastic. I have very expensive glasses. Not because I’m trendy or a slave to high-end brands. Rather, because I have fucked up eyes. A plane ticket to Kansas City or a new iPad just disappeared into 17 feet of water.

This was not the best moment of my weekend, as you might imagine.

It did turn out to be a learning moment, though. It reinforced my choice to never jump into the lake again. I’ll stick to the old man, cautious entry from now on. And it also gave S. the chance to learn how to drive the p.c. because we were about as far away from our dock as we could be and I everything beyond the bow of the boat was a blur to me.

Fortunately, she did just fine. When it came time to dock, I took the wheel and somehow managed to get us in without incident.

So it wasn’t the best of weekends. But no one got hurt, we learned to never let the fuel gauge get to the 1/4 mark, and my optometrist made some money to boot. Better to get these things out of the way on quiet weekends rather than when we have the house full of visitors.

Summer Kickoff

May 27, 2014 /

How did your summer 2014 start off? Ours had highs and lows. Breakdown? You betcha!

I’m hoping the way our weekend began was not an omen for the rest of the summer. L. and M. both woke up with stomach aches Friday. It was L.’s last day of school, with her big bike parade on the agenda, so I did not want to be stuck at home with one or two sick kids. I’ll admit I told M. to suck it up so she didn’t ruin L.’s last day.1

We got M. and C. to school without incident, but on the way home L. puked in the bowl she had brought along. Moments after we got home, St. P’s calls asking me to pick M. up because she was throwing up.

I’ve said it many time and I’ll say it again: Father of the Year!

We had a couple hours of puking on the couch before a quick trip to the pediatrician’s office to check for strep (negative). There was puking in the exam room and in the car again as well. We left with a prescription to ease the nausea and once that kicked in, both girls were able to rest for a bit.

C. made it home feeling ok, but eventually began feeling bad and, you guessed it, puked before bed time. Three girls all puking in one day! A new family record, I believe.

This was concerning not just because everyone was sick, not just because L. missed her last day of pre-K, but because we had big Memorial Day weekend plans. We were not only opening up the LVS.2 We were not only hosting friends and some family for the weekend. But we were also going to take a new (to us at least) pleasure craft out for the first time. If the girls were sick they would likely not be eager to go out on the water.

M. and C. both rebounded and felt decent most of the weekend. L. never really shook it, though, and even got sick again Sunday night. She’s not going to look back on this weekend fondly.

Other than all that ugliness, it was a fine weekend. Gorgeous weather the entire time. Mostly good behavior by the girls, who had their buddies from next door along for the fun. Some really good times with friends and family. Cookouts. Swimming. S’Mores and campfires, with a bonus visit from a curious raccoon. Tubing, for the girls. And our first-ever weekend owning a pleasure craft. Other than someone else asking me to keep it straight for a minute or two, I had never driven3 a pleasure craft before. It was a learning experience, but certainly an enjoyable one.

So it was all kinds of good. The first of many fun weekends for the next three months. With, hopefully, less puking, of course.

I’m off shortly to spend a day with C.’s class on their last, big field trip of the year. It’s supposed to be warm and muggy. And my stomach has felt better. It could be an interesting day…

In my defense, C. complained about an upset stomach Thursday morning and ended up being fine. And the last time I let M. stay home, she miraculously felt fine the moment we dropped L. off at school. ↩
Local Vacation Spot, if your memory has slipped. ↩
Piloted? Run? Can I get a ruling here? ↩

Tubing

August 1, 2012 /

Another entry into the list of things the girls did for the first time in the summer of 2012: tubing on a lake.

Thanks to some friends, the girls got to go out on a boat over the weekend. M. and C. both got a couple turns on the tube behind the boat. Both had great times.

M. was the first up. I was a little surprised at how eager she was to get out on the water given her cautious nature. But she had been watching older kids in our group tube for awhile and I guess that helped her get over any qualms she had about doing it. We took a lap of the lake, at a moderate speed, and she did fantastic. No wipeouts, no moments where she struggled to stay on. She even gave us a thumbs up to go faster a couple times.

Then it was C.’s turn. Where M. may have gained confidence from watching the others, C. had no fear to begin with. She decided was going to do everything the bigger kids had done. So, as soon as we took off, she throws her hands in the air, pops up onto her knees, and shows how she can ride without hanging on. First time ever on a tube and she’s already doing tricks. That’s about right.

I got her to lay back down and hang on, but she was busy rocking her tube, trying to crash into her tubing partner on turns, and lifting her arms up every chance she got. Then we made the big turn and the end of the lake. Her tube rocketed around the turn, hit the wake, and when it slammed into the lake surface, she flew off. This she did not like so much. She screamed and cried, I think more out of fear the boat was leaving her than any pain or surprise from getting tossed. She calmed down just enough to swim at a near world record pace to get back to her tube. With some help from her partner, she climbed back on and was ready to go again.

They went out again Saturday. While I was not with them, then, I heard they did great then, too. No wipeouts for either girl this time.

Both times L. watched from the boat. She did not love the boat, both times getting grumpy and closing her eyes after a while. Probably not a lot of fun to be the only kid on the boat who didn’t get a turn. Maybe next year she’ll be ready.

Diving boards. Plane rides. Trips to the mountains. And now tubing. It’s been quite a summer.

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