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...

I found this nice picture of Silverwood Lake on the California State Parks website. If you're planning a trip visit http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=650 and make sure to click on the link to make a boat reservation (the link is on the right side of the page) since the weekends sell out in advance. I was stunned to find out that the boat line for the portion of the allotted boat spots given first come first serve sometimes starts to form at 11pm Friday night. Not a nice way to start your day on the lake if you ask me... so plan ahead and make a reservation.

August 12th, 2006

I learned what 'b.o.a.t.' stands for today. Bust Out Another Thousand. Actually, it ended up being nothing but a bunch of chaos. We went to Lake Elsinore towards the end of the day. The winds were starting to pick up, but we just wanted to ride around for a bit anyways so we were happy to be at the lake. We launched the boat and I fired her up with no problem. I started backing up and then had to jump up to handle something. When I went to start the boat up again it wouldn't do more than just turn over. We thought it was the battery, and weren't going to attempt a wet jumpstart with the waves crashing on us due to the wind. We ended up pulling the boat out and just BBQ-ing on the beach, which was nice too. It was really choppy so we didn't miss much in terms of nice lake time, but I was worried about the boat.

After a couple of visits with mechanics, friends, neighbors, boat enthusiasts and mailmen it turns out it was just flooded. Now I know that all I need to do is give the beast some gas next time and fire her up. Since we haven't named the boat yet I was starting to think 'Bipolar' would be good since it's hard to tell what mood it's going to be in on any given day.

We're heading out again this coming weekend, not sure which lake yet though. Hopefully we'll have an ocean run to report soon.

Tank of gas: $75.oo
Lake Fees: $15.00
BBQ food: $25.00
Time with Family: Priceless