Season recap

2023 season recap

We are happy to report that the 2023 summer (our 12th season!) was the best one yet and it is all because of our amazing campers and the greatest staff in camp history. We witnessed wild watersports progression with campers achieving so many of their goals while also thoroughly enjoying swim parties, rope swing breaks, intense games on the field, SUP voyages and countless meals, snacks and desserts. I hope that all of our campers went home tired and happy with new skills and lasting friendships.

After years of running at capacity our goal for 2023 was to slow it all down. Having a full camp is great but the hustle and pressure to give everyone enough time behind the boat meant always watching the clock. This summer we aimed for 16-18 campers each week instead of 20 and it made a massive difference in our program with campers and coaches not only getting more time behind the boats but also more flexibility to do other stuff like pull ten campers at once for over an hour, surf bowls, extended swim breaks, bonus beach time and, maybe, occasionally sleeping in on a rainy morning.

Here are some fun stats from our 12th season:

  • 8 weeks of camp from mid-June to mid-August.

  • 81.875% full (131 spaces filled out of 160 with 118 unique campers)

  • Campers stayed an average of 1.1 weeks at camp

  • Average number of campers each week was 16.375

  • Campers were 73% boys and 27% girls

  • Average camper age was 13.55

  • 48% new campers and 52% returners

  • Campers chose to wakeboard 40%, wakesurf 50%, waterski 10%

  • Campers came from 10 states (CT, MA, MD, ME, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA and TX) as well as Italy and Mexico

  • 6 coaches, 1 chef and 1 director

  • Average coach age was 20.33

  • 3,200 delicious meals served by Chef Cher

  • 55 five-gallon buckets of non-meat food scraps diverted from the landfill and fed to our local pigs

  • About 175 hours of private lessons on our boats and client boats

  • 1 retired Sunday River chairlift won at auction for charity (our winning bid was $800)

  • 9,040 pictures and videos uploaded and shared with our camp families

  • 21,000 visitors to www.watermonkeycamp.com in the past year (18,000 unique) spent an average of 82 seconds on the site and engaged 36,000 page views

  • Winterizing our property took 20 gallons of antifreeze

  • 577 hours logged on our two boats plus 23 hours on loaner boats after our new boat blew and engine!

  • Our boats had 15 motor oil changes, 2 transmission fluid changes and 1 blown engine

  • 3,636.269 gallons of premium marine fuel burned by our boats producing roughly 32.27 metric tons of CO2 (71,132 pounds). We offset this pollution through a donation to CoolEffect.org which has been our charity of choice for over 10 years for carbon offsets.

  • We have now offset roughly 410 metric tons of CO2 since 2012!

Before we wrap this up here is a little gift…a Fall Recipe from Chef Cher.

We have some big plans for camp in 2024 and we sincerely hope to see you next summer!

Always feel free to email, call, text, message, write or visit to say hello.

-Evan

2022 season recap

The 2022 season, our 11th summer, was epic. We had so much fun working with our campers in their watersports progression. It was also equally rewarding to see the campers...returning and new...grow as individuals and as a group in the camp setting. Add to that nearly perfect weather and a dream staff and we could not be happier with how things went.

mastercraft wakeboard boats lake new hampshire

Here are some fun stats!

  • 95.71% full (134 spaces filled out of 140 with 121 unique campers)

  • Campers stayed an average of 1.11 weeks at camp

  • Average number of campers each week was 19.14

  • Campers were 67% boys and 33% girls

  • Average camper age was 13.68 years old

  • 46% new campers and 54% returners

  • Campers chose to wakeboard 45%, wakesurf 45%, waterski 10%

  • Campers came from 12 states (CT, MA, MD, ME, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OR, PA, RI and TX) as well as Canada and Italy

  • 1 new camp game (beach kadima foursquare)

  • 6 coaches, 1 chef and 1 director

  • Average coach age was 20

  • 3,950 meals served by Chef Cher

  • 75 five-gallon buckets of non-meat scraps fed to local hungry pigs to divert food waste from the landfill

  • 10 day campers joined 3 coaches for a week of fun on Lake Sunapee

  • 17,428 unique visitors to www.watermonkeycamp.com

  • 7,706 photos and videos uploaded and shared with camp families

  • We clocked 514 hours on 3 boats…Maverick (Marley), Iceman and Bob (thanks Wheelan family for letting us have Bob back for a week while Maverick was in the shop)

  • Our boats had 18 motor oil changes, 1 transmission oil change, 1 blown water pump and 1 blown engine (yikes)

  • 2,997.878 gallons of premium gas burned producing roughly 27.196 metric tons of CO2 which we offset with contributions to the Society For The Protection of New Hampshire Forests and CoolEffect.org . Our contributions this year will offset about 75 metric tons of CO2 with the extra going towards camper travel to and from camp!

  • We have now offset around 375 metric tons of CO2 since 2012!

And as a parting gift…here is a great fall recipe from Chef Cher: Apple Cider Muffins

We sincerely hope to see all of our campers back here in 2023 and to welcome many more fresh faces to the camp family.

Always feel free to email, call, write, DM, text or stop by to say hello!

Evan


2021 season recap

Our 2021 season is just winding down and it was by far our best...the best staff ever assembled, the best boats and equipment, the best groups of campers we have had the pleasure of working with and the best attitudes from everyone involved dealing with five weeks of rain from June through July! A lot goes into making a summer of camp happen so take a look below at some fun camp stats:

  • 140 campers over 7 weeks (plus 10 campers at our Sunapee Day Camp)

  • Campers stayed an average of 1.125 weeks at camp

  • Average number of campers each week was 20

  • Campers were 27% girls and 73% boys

  • Average camper age was 13.66

  • 54% new campers and 46% returners

  • Campers came from 16 states (CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, IL, MA, ME, MT, NH, NJ, NY, OR, PA,RI and TX) as well as Washington, DC, Mexico and the U.S. Virgin Islands (we were closed to most international campers in 2021)

  • There were 7 coaches, 1 chef and 1 director

  • Average coach age was 19.7

  • 3 coaches had their birthdays during the summer (Sam, Zoe and Elijah)

  • 3,960 ridiculous meals prepared by Chef Cher who used approximately:

    • 1290 eggs

    • 370 pounds of flour

    • 110 pounds of strawberries

    • 60 pounds of chocolate chips (mostly in 860 homemade choc chip muffins)

    • 250 pounds of chicken

    • 150 gallons of lemonade

    • 65 hours a week of cooking (plus countless hours shopping)

    • 75 five-gallon buckets of non-meat scraps fed to local hungry pigs to divert food waste from the landfill

  • 5 pallets of concrete used to pour new cabin footings

  • 11,309 unique visitors to watermonkeycamp.com in the last 12 months

  • 9,278 photos uploaded and shared with camp families

  • 540 hours on our 2 2021 MasterCraft NXT22's (Bob and Marley)

  • 16 boat oil changes (plus 1 water pump)

  • 3048.935 gallons of gas burned producing roughly 34 metric tons of CO2 which we offset with contributions to the Society For The Protection of New Hampshire Forests and CoolEffect.org Our contributions this year will offset about 75 metric tons of CO2 with the extra going towards camper travel to and from camp!

  • We have now offset around 300 metric tons of CO2 since 2012!

Those stats do not really do justice to all of the fun we had this summer but hopefully it was a good read! We are hard at work getting ready for 2022 and I sincerely hope to see all of our campers back again for great times on the boats!

-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

2018 season recap

Our season just ended and it was the biggest and baddest since I launched the camp seven years ago. In 2018 we had my favorite staff of all time, so many awesome campers and the two coolest boats I could imagine. Many thanks to everyone involved for helping make it all happen.

In this recap I want to focus on friendships at camp. Seeing new friendships form, grow and continue for years has easily been my favorite part of running Water Monkey. So many of our campers have made friends here at camp and then brought those relationships back home by meeting up during the year (even flying and visiting each other as far as Europe from the U.S.), coordinating vacations together, going to the same college together and keeping in constant contact via social media.

On the first day at camp most of us are strangers. After seven days together on the boats, at meals, playing sports and having fun it can be difficult to say goodbye. I always knew that Water Monkey would be a special place where like-minded campers and staff would meet and get to know each other but I guess the extent to which it has surpassed my expectations is a testament to how unique our camp program is.

Water Monkey Camp as a whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts...you can buy yourself an epic boat and some gear and spend a week out on the lake but you’ll me missing a bit of magic that happens here each summer.

Now some fun 2018 stats!

  • 126 campers over 7 weeks!

  • Campers stayed an average of 1.21 weeks at camp (longest stay by any camper was 4 weeks by Stan tha man)

  • Average number of campers per week was 18 (we limited each week this summer to 18 campers and were full every week)

  • Campers were 68% boys and 32% girls

  • Average camper age was 13.9

  • 57.9% of campers were returners, 42.1% were first timers

  • Campers came from 15 states (CO, CT, DC, GA, IL, MA, ME, MT, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, VA and VT) as well as Canada, China, France and Italy!

  • 2,055 gourmet meals prepared and served by amazing Chef Rebecca

  • 400 pounds of food scraps and waste diverted from the landfill to local hungry pigs!

  • 10,804 unique visitors to watermonkeycamp.com in the past 12 months

  • 10,363 photos uploaded for parents and campers to enjoy

  • 3 baby loons on the lake

  • 1 Taylor Swift concert at Gillette Stadium

  • Infinite smiles, laughs and good times

  • Average water temperature during camp was 78 degrees

  • Merrymeeting Lake is 1,100 acres and the cleanest lake in New Hampshire

  • 24 hours spent cleaning boat insides during the season and 20 hours spent washing and waxing the outsides

  • 254 hours on the Calypso Green MasterCraft NXT22 and 234 hours on the Jetstream Blue MasterCraft NXT22 for a total of 488 hours of boating this season!

  • 2,800 gallons of gas consumed on the lake producing roughly 25 metric tons of CO2 offsett with contributions to cooleffect.org (specifically the Alto Mayo Conservation Initiative) as well as the Southeast Land Trust of New Hampshire who, along with many Merrymeeting Residents and the US Forest Service, is attempting to raise $1,500,000 preserve 2,000 acres of forest surrounding our perfect lake. Our total contributions will offset about 50 metric tons of CO2 this year with the extra going towards camper travel to/from camp.

I hope that all of our campers, staff and their families have a terrific year and that you keep us in mind as you start planning your 2019 summer. Our tuition will be going up next year for the first time in five years but we do not want you to miss out on camp because of that. As always we will be offering a $300 referral bonus for every new camper you send our way who enrolls and new this year by parent requests is the option to set up a payment plan for your camper’s tuition. I am always here to answer your questions so feel free to e-mail, call, snail mail or set up a time to visit and we hope to see you back here next summer!

Sincerely,

Evan Goldner

617-855-9253

evan@watermonkeycamp.com