The park imported some sand, and they maintain a little swim area.
It has a shark net around the outer perimeter, and a float line perimeter on the interior.
Both my girls can swim like fish, and as they went out to the first line, I was wondering how deep it was there.
They swam and it looked pretty deep, but then my younger one stood up and it barely came up to her armpits, so it was pretty shallow.
I walked to the end of the concrete bulkhead area and took these two pics looking back.
You can see the oday in the background, she is against a concrete bulkhead. All the beach area was covered in kids, so I didn't see a spot to beach the boat, and on the other side of the concrete bulkhead was swampy tall grass which often harbor snakes, so the only place I really had was the bulkheads. Luckily I brought a couple of bumpers, I was going to leave them at home.
As I was coming in to land at the bulkhead, there was a family of 6 sanding right at the edge where I wanted to go, and they were just staring at me (all of them age 12 or older). I hailed them to say I was landing my boat there, but they didn't speak english. Though it was pretty obvious with me holding an anchor in one hand, and puttering RIGHT FOR THEM. I also waved my hand in a "could you move please" motion, but I guess they didn't speak sign language either.
So I came in as slow as I could, hopped off right in the middle of them and then walked forward with my anchor & rode.
As if I were a police man at a million mom march, with the rode stretched across at knee level and pressing against them, they finally got the idea I was parking there and they needed to take 2 steps back.
Not sure if I am conveying the humor properly, but here they are, 6 of them huddled in the one spot that I need to land, like penguins waiting to jump off the edge of a galcier. Flat mowed grass for 100' in each direction around them, with nobody else near them, plenty of space to scoot back just 2 steps, so I can get off my boat.
No docking cleats to be seen, I pushed my anchor in the grass with my foot. I looked up and smiled at the family, the father raised his eyebrows as if to say "oh, so that is what you were going to do". Then in some foriegn jabber they said something to themselves and suddenly walked away. I think they said "So we drove all the way out here to see this?".
The girls played and played, making sand castles, swimming in the water and having a great time.
It sprinkled a little and half of the people at the beach left, but I figured my girls were already wet so it didn't matter.
Stayed at the beach till it started to get dark.
Got on the boat and the girls went below, wrapped in towels they said they were HUNGRY!!!
I unscrewed the lid to the big snack bucket, scooted it towards them and they started munching.
Man that was easy !!
This could mean the end of my cooking on boats !!
And realistically, I am not out here for the food, if I want something fancy to eat, I'll make it when I get back home.
We motored to the farthest point in the lake from the launch ramp, which is only about a mile. Anchored there and watched the bass hit the surface. That lake has a lot of fish in it, they prohibit removal of large mouth bass, so there are some really big ones that hit the bugs on the surface.
Still had some ants living in the boat from when I recovered it, we would grab the ants and toss them overboard, then sit still and wait for them to get gobbled up by the fish. The ants were nesting in a big block of foam in the stern, while cleaning I couldn't reach them or wash them out, guessing they are embedded in this big block of foam under the cockpit in the stern. I was using ant baits to kill them off, but while out on the water it dawned on me that I should have just taken a saw and cut the foam out. Would have taken all of 5 minutes, but hey, they don't bite, and it was too late now.
We played a few games on the travel game set, it has little magnetic pieces and a bunch of different game boards that scroll over the surface.
Great for the boat.
The biggest attraction point of this boat is the huge 8' cockpit, and I though it might be squeezing the cabin, but there really is a bunch of space in there. I can sit up and move around, change clothes, use the potti etc, doing all this with both kids in there with me.
There goes another ant out the front hatch.
The bolts for the mast step stuck down into the cabin, and to keep from cutting my head open on them, I put a piece of plywood around them. This also made a great place to mount a couple of LED flashlights.
Notice there is no compression post !! The cabin top has a transfer beam molded into it, so the compression load is transferred to the sides and into the gunnels. I have only had a couple of boats that had transfer beams like this, really is a nice feature. If it didn't have the beam, I definitely would have glassed one in.
I am very impressed with the quality of the molding, the entire cabin top is very solid, with a smooth finish (lots of the smooth splatter bubbles). This boat was built back in the day when they actually put glass into the boats, must have been a lot cheaper then.
Back to Main Page