Bill and I were hatching a plan to go sailing at Lake Livingston in December of 2003. We first were planning on launching at Wolf Creek State Park, but discovered it is normally closed from Nov 30 - Mar 1, so we looked over the Lake Livingston access point map.
It looks like there are a bunch of places to launch, but many of those ramps are closed. The one we settled on was Patrick's Ferry at the base of the 190 bridge on the West side.
Tried to launch Bill's Sparrow 12 first (it is the boat with the rounded top cabin), but the water wasn't deep enough to float it above the axle. He also has 12" wheels so it was even more height to overcome. So we headed for the East side of the bridge to launch at Lakeside Resort.
Don't want to give the wrong impression, it only takes 18" of water to get the Guppy off her trailer, just that the Patrick's ramp was very shallow for a long distance out. I used a stick to measure the depth for the distance that Bill could back into, and it was just too shallow.
Bill helped and tied the Guppy over to the dock on the Southern side of the ramp. That dock didn't have a single cleat on it, so he made a knot in the bow line and jammed it between a couple of the boards. Then we launched the Sparrow, I tied it up as Bill went to park his truck. Just as I was finishing the figure 8 on the cleat, I realized that sure enough, Bill had swindled me out of the good dock! This dock had a couple of tires mounted on the side of it as bumpers, and had several good sized cleats ! A running joke for the rest of the day was that I had to respect my elders and let the old man have the "high class" dock, while I had to use the "economy facilities".
Started off with some pretty light winds, the luff on Bill's jib looked a little loose so he came over for a little on the water service.
A little trucker's hitch and it is all tight.