Blog — Water Monkey Summer Camp

2019 season recap

The 2019 Water Monkey Camp season was fun, full and over far too fast. Our eighth year of camp was again our biggest as we continued to grow (and expand to other lakes). Campers achieved insane progression and, as always, disconnected from the ‘real world’ for a week or more of pure enjoyment on the lake.

Merrymeeting Lake from above looking back towards camp.

Now some fun 2019 stats!

  • 133 campers over 7 weeks (plus 18 campers over 2 weeks of day camp)!

  • Campers stayed an average of 1.23 weeks at camp (longest stay by any camper was 4 weeks by the one and only Elijah Goldberg (15 weeks of camp since 2014!))

  • Average number of campers per week was 19

  • Campers were 29% girls and 71% boys

  • Average camper age was 13.74

  • 50% of campers were returners, 50% were first timers

  • Campers came from 16 states (CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, IL, MA, MD, ME, NH, NJ, NY, OR, PA, VA, VT) as well as Canada, Dominican Republic, France, Morocco, Peru and Singapore!

  • 6 coaches, 1 director, 1 chef and 1 pro wakeboard bum who lived at camp

  • 3,596 gourmet meals prepared and served by amazing Chef Rebecca

  • 500 pounds of food scraps diverted from the landfill to local hungry pigs!

  • 38 delicious lunches provided by Tucker’s for our new Lake Sunapee Day Camp!

  • 0 minutes of camper cell phone time!

  • 11,249 unique visitors to watermonkeycamp.com in the past 12 months

  • 220,000 ad impressions on Google!

  • 15,371 photos uploaded for parents and campers to enjoy

  • 16 crazy Tuckerman ‘blackouts’ on the beach

  • Campers were pummeled by 2,500 water balloons during Monkey Ball

  • Infinite smiles, laughs and good times

  • Average water temperature during camp was 77 degrees

  • 272 hours on the black/black MasterCraft NXT22 (a.k.a. Betty) and 283 hours on the white/blue MasterCraft NXT22 (a.k.a. Fred) for a total of 555 hours of boating!

  • 16 oil changes

  • 1 broken propeller (hit a submerged object)

  • 3304.432 gallons of gas consumed on the lake producing roughly 35 metric tons of CO2 offsett with contributions to cooleffect.org (specifically the Alto Mayo Conservation Initiative) as well as the Society for the Protection of NH Forests. Our total contributions will offset about 70 metric tons of CO2 this year with the extra offsets going towards camper travel to/from camp.

That is it for the 2019 recap! As always I hope to see all of our campers back again in 2020 for more watersports fun so please keep us in mind as you start to plan out your summer. I am always here to answer your questions so feel free to e-mail, call, snail mail or set up a time to visit.

Sincerely,

Evan Goldner

617-855-9253

evan@watermonkeycamp.com

2020 boats!

Our 2019 were barely broken in but they are a distant memory now as our new 2020 boats are on order! The MasterCraft NXT22 has been our favorite camp boat since 2016 and the amazing people over at MasterCraft have redesigned it from the hull up! It has a more powerful engine, more aggressive hull styling, updated seating layout and new surf technology! Check out our colors below…we hope you like them!

it's been a while!

Yikes! We have not posted since early May! We had such a busy, awesome season at the lake there just has not been time to sit down at the computer and type anything. The summer is winding down, though, so we can refocus some attention towards our neglected blog!

Last week I had an hour to kill so Tuckerman and I ran up Mt. Molly to take in the view of the lake. No foliage yet which means summer is still in full effect!

These late summer days are pretty awesome here at Merrymeeting. The end of the season is also a bit bittersweet as we say farewell to our barely used boats.

After camp we were booked solid with private lessons but both boats were sold early in September so the fun had to end. The Black NXT22 (Betty) went with its new family down the road to Rochester, NH while the blue NXT22 (Fred) is currently traveling across the country to Bend, OR! I gave both boats a full detail, oil change and topped off the gas for the new owners before they rolled out of the driveway.

On Fred’s last day at camp (Monday, September 26) we had a beautiful sunrise and calm water. That steam coming off of the lake is really just the nice warm water turning cold (although as of yesterday, September 21, the lake was still in the high 60’s!).

Just because the campers are gone does not mean there are no kids having fun at Water Monkey!

Finn and Kai have been taking full advantage of the entire property. The beach is now their private play zone and the upper property is a giant driving course for their Raptor PowerWheels!

That is it for now. As always you should follow our Instagram account (@watermonkeycamp) for more consistent posts. Coming in the next couple of weeks will be our season recap!

Get out and have some fun!

-Evan

april showers bring...may showers

As hard as I try I cannot control the weather. In the summer I wish I could snap my fingers and make the wind disappear on the lake. Come winter I would like to dance a jig and get a few feet a powder. Every fall…well fall in NH is pretty perfect. This spring, though, I have definitely been trying to will the rain away but have had no luck yet. It is great for our trees, grass and the health of the lake but is really delaying our landscaping, painting and outdoor work at camp (and keeping mountain biking trails too wet to ride).

These shots are typical of the weather lately. The lake is super high (and a wee bit chilly still). Up at the cabins I was on the roof blowing leaves and pine needles away and snapped this shot just before the sky opened up on me.

The bottom line is that, according to our instagram poll yesterday, 72% of you say the sun will make an appearance again someday and that is good enough for me!

See you outside!

first sets of the season!

This past weekend we got out on the water for the first sets of the season! Our boats are not in the water yet but luckily we have some friends who are not scared of some cold temps!

We met at 6AM and were treated to a gorgeous display of sunrise, fog, the moon and a perfectly glassy Lake Sunapee.

Our ride for the day was this gorgeous Nautique G23!

Thick wetsuits were mandatory with water temps in the low 40’s. It was a blast getting out on the surfer for the first time since October! It is pretty cool to look at these pictures with still-snowy Mount Sunapee in the background.

Thanks so much to the Cole-Tucker fam for having their boat ready this early in the season and inviting me to tag along! Reed - on the left above - is one of our campers and an absolute shredder on the wakesurf board.

The season is just getting started!