Oh Boat, How I Love Thee

It was a long and hard fought battle, but about two years ago, we finally convinced Dad to buy a boat for Michigan. They planned to spend more time up there, now that they were retired, and I guess he couldn’t hold out any longer. But then I went to China for my Corporate Service Corps assignment so we didn’t go to Michigan that summer. Then last year we had the foot incident (aka So You’re Going to Be My Interesting Patient).

So this year was going to be the year that I got to fully experience the new boat. And thankfully, that fully turned out to be the case. I lost track of how many different times that we went out on the boat, but it was nearly every day. And I had a ton of fun, nearly every day.

It’s a pontoon boat, but it does have a 75 HP engine, so it’s still able to get up and go. It won’t pull a water skier, but it does great with the tube behind it.

Everyone but Mom went at least once throughout the week, but Carlyn and I certainly took home the crown for most rides. Dad was happy to just captain most of the time.

Crosby started off being all about it. He wanted to be first, then go again and again the first few days. He also wanted to have a boat swimming party on of the days, so we just stopped the boat in the middle of the lake and all got out and swam for a bit. I’m not fully sure what happened midway through, but eventually he decided that he just wanted to watch or go for a ride in the boat rather than in the tube.

Carlyn was hilarious about tubing. I have to think that the trip to Schlitterbahn made a bit impact on her willingness to get out there, but she did it with no issues whatsoever. And that attitude stayed there the whole time. Both kids would sit down in the bottom of the tube and grab onto the handles, but she was so small that if she ducked down a bit, you could barely see her.

For everyone, we decided on some basic hand signals to communicate with the boat — the most prevalent one being a fist for stop.

Carlyn picked that up in a heartbeat, and was just so proud of herself each time she raised up her hand. Half the time she did it just to show she was in control and then wanted to start going again. It was super cute.

The only mishap she had was that she decided that she wanted to swim back to the boat one day from the tube, which ended up with her dumping out of the tube and flipping into the water. As you can imagine, that did not go over well. I dove in after her (she was wearing a life jacket of course) and swam her back in — but she was back out there again the next day. This time she decided that being pulled in was a better idea though. 🙂

Korey went most of the days as well, but opted to stay mostly in the wake and not get too crazy. Dad only went once on one of the very calm days and only wanted about 2/3 of the power.

And then there was me. Maybe I’m actually a daredevil trapped in a overly practical person’s body. Whatever it was, this is one of those times, where I just let loose and don’t overplay the safe card. Not that I did anything overly dangerous or stupid, but I was certainly out there having fun.

I’d lean way back and ride just on the heal of the tube, then do everything I could to fly out to the side of the boat. I’d switch between being on my stomach to rearing back on my knees. By the end, I had really good control over things. But there were certainly a few times where I got overzealous and the rope got caught in the water and I went flying off the tube!

Outside of the few unintentional dumplings, there were also several where I went off on purpose at the end of the ride. Dad let both kids help drive the boat a bit and you wouldn’t believe how much fun they were having when they “dumped” me off the tube. They thought that was just the funniest thing in the world, so of course I played up into it as well.

The boat was certainly just part of the fun that we had, but it definitely was a fun one!