Just splittin' some wood...

A friend of camp had to cut some trees down at their house and they donated some wood to us! Time for a fun project!

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First step, getting all the wood to camp. It took two trips with the ol’ F-150 to get all of the logs here to the property. Then I borrowed a wood splitter and cleared the schedule for a day.

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(But first!) I needed somewhere to store the split wood. A quick stop on the interweb pointed me to this remarkably sturdy yet cheap and easy wood storage rack concept. I used scrap wood from around camp and two (then three) cinder blocks to create the rack. It will keep the wood up off the ground so it stays dry, stacked and ready to fire up!

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Whoa the wood keeps multiplying! One day of splitting turned to two but talk about instant gratification!

A quick break to see us committing wholesale genocide on an ant civilization. (Sound off, it’s just the log splitter roaring in the background.) I had a lot of surprises while splitting open logs (mostly grubs, beetles and ants) but these guys were next level. They immediately began ejecting their eggs and trying to save each other…it was crazy! Sorry fellas.

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Oh just me in lumberjack mode.

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The finished product. One tree sure yields a lot of wood! That stack is roughly six feet high by eight feet wide. Plus the mini stack in front and another bin full of wood a little further away. Lots of fun campfires in our future!

And now…a grasshopper:

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Wintery Camp

Last week I had a chance to spend some time up at camp. It was blanketed in snow…as expected in February in NH!

It was a beautiful bluebird day at the lake and I started by doing my rounds of the buildings and making sure everything was OK. This has been a super mild winter so far with not much snow but enough to look nice!

The cabins were all in great shape. As I finished checking on everything I grabbed the below shot from the porch on cabin 5. You can see the frozen lake beyond the trees.

With a bit of time to spare I decided to run up Mt. Molly (the mountain that many of our campers have climbed with us to take in views of Merrymeeting Lake).

The path up was mostly untouched so we (Tuckerman and I) had to break the trail. Once up top it was limitless views and lots of sunshine.

On the way out I stopped for a quick shot in front of the clubhouse.

Views for days.

It’s always fun to get outside!

-Evan

The future is here!

Boat talk is a constant at camp. MasterCraft, Nautique, Malibu, wake size, wake shape, seats, hull, tower, cupholders, engine…I could go on. That is why news like this is so exciting:

https://plugboats.com/nautique-electric-wakeboard-boat-seattle-show/

Electric wake boats!

Here are my top 5 reasons why electric wake boats are the future:

  1. Weight - ‘There’s no replacement for displacement’. Forget about lead weight and fat sacs when you add thousands of pounds of batteries to the mix. What may be a downside to electric cars is a benefit to electric wake boats. Designers could place battery banks strategically to boost the wake size/shape and supercharge wakeboard and wakesurf wakes.

  2. Instantaneous Torque - Just hit it and rip. No more launch control (or old-school launch control having passengers shift around to get to plane faster). Electric motors provide instantaneous torque so as soon as the throttle is pressed the electric motor transfers its power to the propeller.

  3. No More Boat Exhaust - We have all gotten a face full of boat exhaust surfing on a chilly morning. Surf pipes kind of worked to divert the exhaust but how nice would it be to just eliminate it entirely? An added benefit - no more engine noise! Hop in to the water and all you hear are your friends and music from the boat and nothing else.

  4. Rethink Boat Design - Remove the engine and boat designers could radically rethink the cabin, cockpit and hull. No more fire suppression systems or fuel tanks, no transmissions, no oil changes! Bring on the future and remote joysticks that let you drive while coaching at the stern!

  5. Save the Environment - If you know Water Monkey you know we are obsessed with saving our planet. Imagine a charging station at your dock hooked up to solar panels and mini wind turbines on your property. Imagine saving thousands of dollars a season on fuel…money you would surely pump right back into new equipment and boat toys! Save the planet, save money, a win-win for boaters.

Of course there are some big question marks. What happens when you swamp a boat loaded up with batteries? How long will the charge last and how long will it take to recharge? Will I miss the sound of the engine firing up in the morning?

One thing is for sure, though, the future of wake boats is electric.

-Evan

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!