We were on vacation last week, and went out twice on our boat.

The marina had their annual end-of-season pig roast the first weekend, so we pretty much stuck around the dock and participated in the activities. The waves were a bit rough on the big lake the first weekend as well. Not many ventured out because of that.

We are getting to be nice friends with our new dock mates, and we had planned a bit that we might meet up with them mid-week at White Lake or "wherever the wind takes us", but the weather turned a bit cold during the week.

They have a 38ft GFBL and a sailboat - talk about extremes.

They normally have their GFBL on a trailer, but never had participated in the marina life. So they thought they were missing that aspect of boating, so they bought a 30ft sailboat earlier this year just so they could have someplace to hang out.

Our first outing of the week, we took our boat up to Muskegon for the afternoon, then back - just kind of aimless travelling. Nothing new or unusual to report there - it was a nice, flat day on the lake, and we had a pleasant cruise.

Later in the week, we took our new dockmates on an afternoon/evening cruise on our boat down to near Port Sheldon to the south.

Anyway, the guy is pretty good with boats, and a lot better with engines than I am - which I freely admit. We get into these conversations over a beer over the finer points of boating and boat projects; such as properly bedding fittings, use of epoxy, and so on.

He is the only other person I feel has as much knowledge about boat projects as I do.

When we were out on the second cruise - the one we took our dock mates on, we got into some rough water on the way back. I have not really encountered rough water all that much since I have owned the boat, but he and I discovered that my trim tabs can be pretty sensitive in rough water. I had not noticed it that much before, but he picked up on it really quick, as with his GFBL he indicated trimming the boat with the tabs can be tricky.

We both decided the reason for my sensitive tabs were due to the large ones that the previous owner put on the boat. So in heavy weather, just a slight movement can make a huge difference in how the boat handles in rough water.

So all-in-all, we had a pretty busy week, with a couple of nice boat trips during the week. We put maybe 6 ~ 8 hours on the engines last week; which is equivalent to 16 hours for you single-engined dudes.

Sounds like a fine time Al. Lets see those photos
Have you invited him here. We all, I am sure would love to see photos of his "Go fast" and "Blow Boat" and his adventures on the big lake and also the beer he likes.

He brought two "kegs" of Oberon last week to the docks, so I am sure you would take a liking to him...

I'll have to invite him to the board.

I have not posted photos as I am not sure how kindly they would like photos of their boat on the website.

Well, since you are now "buddies" you can ask him if it's okay to post pictures of your trip and his boat when you tell him about BABC. Looking forward to some boating pictures and some more stories.

Wow, that shot is just crazy to me...it seems like he was just born...now he's ambling along the beach like a cool little dude!

Nice thread, we haven't been out a lot recently as my family was back in IL for almost 2 weeks visiting family. I did get to ski behind a 197 Prostar the other day and that was a lot of fun. One of our neighbors sold their house and are renting a lakefront home for the summer while their new home is being built and had a get together this past weekend. It was a perfect evening by the lake w/ good food and company. It's also where I met the guy w/ the Prostar. Good guy with a love of skiing. He told me about another neighbor who he thinks is in his late 60s or early 70s who barefoots off his dock almost every morning. His wife drives. Nice inspiration.

Nice pictures all. Being a structural engineer, I really liked the pictures of all those bridges, GFC.

Good to see so many getting out and burning through all that fuel!

Of course our plans to get out were spoiled by a broken axle, but we'll get out next weekend.

deepv, just 'cause y'all like bridges so much (I do too...they're great to photograph) here are a couple of my favorite photos of bridges. These weren't taken this weekend, just some old favorites.

This is the same bridge as the white one shown in that first pic from the cruise pics. It took me forever to find the right combination of (a) a calm night (b) a full moon and (c) the time to get out on the boat to take the pic.


Here are a couple of pics of another bridge in the area with the sun setting.




The whole concept of how I took that first pic could have made me a Darwin Award winner. Nobody knew I was out on the boat (mistake #1). Mistake #2, I was standing on the walkway on the outside of the boat. #3 the boat was in gear and I was leaning over the side windshield to steer the boat to the right position on the water to get the moon riht over that tower. Oh, and #4 I was not wearing a PFD.

God truly does protect fools from their own foolishness.

Oh well, all's well that ends well.

The first is a cable stayed bridge

The second is a trussed arch suspension bridge.

Oh and those are really nice shots, GFC. Good thing you didn't kill yourself at that time so you could almost do it a few weeks back.

yeah, I never thought of it that way. Kinda puts things into a different perspective, doesn't it.