Ever since we sold our Sea Ray a year and a half ago I've pretty much deserted this blog. This past weekend I was in Dana Point, CA and remembered how much I enjoy boating. I'm hoping to get a 'starter yacht' or a sailboat in the next couple of months and get back on the water.

Definitely check out my post on this amazing boat, Paraffin.

I am very excited for the ocean to warm up a bit so I can go spear fishing off of the Channel Islands. I've been wanting to take the boat out to Catalina for a while but ever since my brother in law Russ and I did some Hawaiian Slinging in Hawaii last Thanksgiving I have been very eager.

Anybody know how to filet up the fish for some fresh sashimi?
I'm hoping to catch some nice lobster too.

We may be selling our 21 foot Sea Ray I/O bowrider. She's a great boat, but we don't think we'll use her enough this summer.

Comes with a trailer, life jackets, oar, ropes, and some inner tubes.

$7500

We had a fun trip to Silverwood Lake before the Drapers took off to Nebraska. Grandpa J brought his canoe out, so we could have fun in the little cove too.

A day out on Russ and Trisha's boat. Lake Elsinore, CA

Tanya getting ready for some wakeboarding.













Trisha putting safety first.















Liz, Adam and Mason

Although this was in a pool in Palm Springs in May of 2007 I'll still post this here since our little twins enjoyed their boats.

I stumbled onto a great site via myspace.com to www.theboaters.tv to www.theboaters.com. TheBoaters crew is Captained by Julie, a bubbly and charismatic host with a pure passion for boating.


www.theboaters.tv
www.theboaters.com

Ahoy!
Tyler

Dusk from our cottage.
We took a nice trip up to Riverland on the Kings river. Riverland is a neat little area that has waterfront cottages, a pool and spa, a park and RV camping (among other things). It took us about 4 hours to get the cottage cooled down as it was pretty hot during the day. We launched the boat when we got there, just Tanya and I, and I finally made my first big boating faux pas. I launched the boat without putting the drain plug in. Now most honest boaters that I know will admit to doing this at least once, but I still felt pretty sheepish as I jumped in the freezing river and put the plug in with the bilge pump going. I caught it pretty much right away since I keep the plug on a wire on the helm. Once I made a turn and felt the plug whip past my heart sank.



We had a really good time although I don't recommend the river for I/O's.

We made it out to Lake Elsinore on 4/25/2007. The water was cold, but I got in and had a couple of decent runs on the wakeboard. The season has started, hopefully it will be a good year.

Summer is almost here. It sure felt like it was boating season this past weekend.

Friday September 1st. Lake Silverwood, CA.

The water was really nice all the way until about 1pm and then the winds picked up. We had a great time though. My wakeboarding improved, and I pulled off 4 butterslides.






Nice driving!








































Cousins.

So I've decided that the best way to learn wakeboarding is by watching other people online. Here is a video of me after watching just one online tutorial

Weaksauce - video powered by Metacafe
Ok, so it's not me. These guys tear it up. Ten points to anybody that can tell me where the video was shot. I want a house with a private dock like that!

I just got this picture from our Lake Elsinore, CA trip tonight from a friend on another boat. I think this is the first picture on here where you have a decent view of my 1993 Sea Ray. We had a good time, and as you can see, the water is pretty calm, so it was a nice day for wakeboarding.

See More Pics Here

There is contact info at the above link.

August 28th, 2006

We went out to Lake Elsinore, and the boat started up great and ran well the whole time. I have only wakeboarded once, 10 years ago, but we gave it a go today and had a blast.





It took us a little while, but we were able to carve to the outside of the wake within a couple attempts. All in all, we had a great trip. It was surpisingly not too crowded and we were out from 8am to 4pm.

Just a couple more pics from Lake Silverwood 8-11-2006. I just wanted to show that the lake is 'family friendly'

There are some nice beaches where you can set up a day camp or pull in just for a picnic.

These are some pics from the August 10th trip to Lake Silverwood. I just got these tonight from the one whose camera they were on, so I thought I'd do another update.

The water was pretty nice that day.

Not the largest life vests, but 'safety first'.

I must say I am happy that I bought a bowrider. The extra seating is great.

Silverwood is nice since you are allowed to have towable inflatables (ie innertubes)

Lake Elsinore doesn't allow innertubes, so we made sure to put them to good use while we could.

Here are some pics from our first trip to Lake Silverwood. Make sure to have your orange flag... they're $4.99 at the lake if you forget.

Perhaps one of the most important activities at any water source is rock skipping. More important than that is the rock skipping competition. I lost.

Nice form on the rock skipping.

Here you can finally see a picture of the boat in the background. Bimini top is up and boat is ready for some fun.

An alternate shot of above...