Jul 7, 2008

Mellow was good while it lasted

We had a great long weekend at the lake. On Thursday night we took the boat out to watch University Yacht Club's spectacular fireworks show from the water--it's very cool to see the fireworks right over your head and reflected on the water's surface--and on Friday night we hung around the dock and watched the fireworks display put on by Lake Lanier Islands. Morley loves, loves fireworks so he was in Heaven.

On Saturday we spent the night on an island tied up to our friends Steve and Joe (I should clarify that we tied up to the boats owned by Steve and Joe, not tied up to Steve and Joe personally. You can never be too clear about these kinds of things).

It was a perfect combination of the best and worst of boating. On the "worst" side of the equation, all three of our boats had electrical problems at one point--our generator wouldn't start, but Steve happened to have an extra battery with him which fixed the problem. Then Steve's generator crapped out and he couldn't get it fixed with the parts he had on board, but Joe let him run an extension cord over to his boat so Steve could still make coffee and watch the NASCAR race on TV. Then Joe's boat had a problem with his 12v system, but Steve was able to get it fixed which restored power to both of them. There are two lessons in there: (1) something is always going wrong with boats and (2) Steve is a handy guy to know. We don't call him "MacGyver" for nothing.

The best of boating came when we sat around on a peaceful island talking with friends, cooking dinner on the grill, watching a gorgeous sunset, then going to sleep with the boat gently rocking in the water with the sound of waves lapping against the hull and cool lake breezes coming through the windows. On Sunday morning we woke up to a spectacular sunrise and had our coffee up top watching it sparkle on the water. It was good.

On the way back to the dock Sunday morning we cruised by one of the crane companies that had turned us down when we asked them to pull the Butt Ugly Boat so we could inspect the hull. They told us there wasn't enough water at the cranes to handle our boat and I guess they know what they're talking about--here's what the crane looks like normally:

And here's what it looks like now:

To give you some perspective, look at the boat sitting in front of the building to the left. It is a pretty good sized boat so you can see just how far below ground level the water is these days--about sixteen feet less than it should be.

On Sunday afternoon Morley hung out on the dock with our pals Bud and Joey talking about the new boats they were thinking of buying while Heather and I walked up to the marina chapel to take some notes and make some decisions on the upcoming wedding (which, by the way, is now less than two months away). It was a peaceful day and we were relaxed and mellow to the max when we packed up all our stuff and headed home.

And then on the way home I (literally) almost killed Morley when I (literally) almost ran over him with my SUV when we stopped at the grocery store to buy cat food. And then half an hour after we got home our neighbor's house caught on fire.

But I'll have to tell you about that later. I've gotta get to work.

No comments:

Post a Comment