Jun
22
Lake Powell 6/12 – 6/14
Filed Under Boat Stories | 2 Comments
Wow.
What a nice trip. Before we actually got going I was having nervous thoughts about the whole thing. Things going wrong cluttered my head. Would the suburban make the trip towing the boat? Would the boat even start? If it started would it run and not overheat?
You know – typical psycho babble.
But everything went off without a hitch. We left on Friday morning. The drive was not bad at all. I will say however that I get really tense when the wind picks up. The boat turns into a big kite. The climbing was not bad either – the suburban handled everything just fine. And to top it off I had my sister with us keeping the girls company!
First thing that happened was actually getting into Lake Powell. I had to pass the mussel check. Not so much a check as much a cleaning. The boat is now mussel free if it ever had mussels at all. It was a fun joke that day to tell everyone that the boat had no “muscles”.
As soon as we got everything into the room we launched the boat. Rolled down the long ramp, turned around, put her in the water and fired her up. Beautiful. Mom and Don were with us and this was their first ride on the boat. Uncle Don had the house boat out early and everyone was out having dinner. We called Uncle Don and he met us right outside the no wake buoy. What an awesome feeling. Me in my Campbell meeting Uncle Don in his. It was great. I was really, really proud.
Had dinner and then had to hustle back to beat sundown. Big day Saturday.
Quick note on my driving skills. I’m definitely better at putting the boat into dock slips. Up until this trip there were very few opportunities. Now it was every time in and out of the water. I finally got a hang of using reverse properly. There’s no backing up left or right – that’s a luxury for weaker boat owners. Reverse is only useful to slow you down. The trick as I had been told and discovered is to learn to spin to the left. That is, pin the wheel all the way to the right, reverse hard, pin the wheel all the way to the left and forward throttle. Doing this a few times and I can make the boat spin in one spot. Hell – I don’t know. It worked.
Saturday was great. Best of all – I worked up the courage to tow the girls on a tube. Madi and Nola had a blast. Cousin Taylor rode with them and made it fun for the both of them. Then I got to tow my sister. Ha! That was great. Dragging her ass around behind my boat was fun. Sitting around with everyone looking at the boats was also cool. I was very proud of my boat and it felt great to show it off. And to top it off we had a huge BBQ to celebrate Grandma and Grandpa’s 60th anniversary. Great food.
Sunday was totally bitter sweet. The weather was fantastic and we only had 5 hours. I spent a little time sitting with Grandpa talking about Campbell boats. He told me stories of the different boats he built and people he built them with.
I remember sitting there thinking that this was the first of many trips.
And the pictures.
Comments
2 Comments so far
Two questions…do we have your uncles boat on the site yet? and is he coming to the regatta?
Hi Clint,
I just came across your blog tonight while I was doing some research on Campbell boats. I just wanted to stop by and say “Hi”
I’m also glad to hear that your boat is running well and not overheating anymore(stay outta that sand or you’ll tear up that impeller) :0)
Take care,
-Ed