Fall in new hampshire

You have to sometimes get creative in late fall to have some fun outside. The ski slopes are not fully open yet, bike trails are too slick with leaves, frost and mud, and the lake is a bit too cold to play in. Add to that my 18 month old and two week old boys and finding time for an adventure is a bit limited! 

But where there's a will there's a way! Tuckerman and I found a few hours this week and we scooted over to Pawtuckaway State Park for some woods exploration where we found marshes, mega boulders and streams galore.

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Nine miles of walking for me translates to around 25 miles for Tuckerman. 

Keep on enjoying the fall!

-Evan

Fall cleanup at camp!

We are into our first ever fall at the new property! That means crisp, beautiful days, a lake all to myself, and thousands upon thousands of falling leaves.  I have always loved fall clean-up time and the instant gratification you get from making the property look great one last time before it is blanketed in snow.

Step one is raking. Step two is raking. Step three is raking some more.

After building 50+ piles of leaves around the cabins and fields I went to work transferring them to tarps and dragging those tarps to the woods to dump.  The whole ordeal only took about 20 hours over three days and now the place looks great just in time for Thanksgiving.

Fall clean-up is just one aspect of getting the property ready for the winter.  Here is everything else I have done!

• 'Winterize' the pipes - because most of the buildings at camp are not heated we have to drain all of the water pipes, toilets, sinks, etc. That requires going under each cabin with an air compressor, blowing out the lines, and using a bit of antifreeze to make sure there is no water trapped anywhere that could freeze and break the pipes.
• Deactivate the fire alarm system - we have a state of the art fire alarm system in our cabins and buildings but it has to be turned off for the year when we are not around all of the time.  This was fairly straightforward after reading the manual and inspecting some diagrams.  I had to disconnect the back-up batteries and the turn off the electrical circuit powering the system.

•  Pull in the docks - our fantastic deep-water docks cannot stay in the lake all winter so we have to disassemble and remove them from the water.  There are two large sections that we detach and float to the marina to be hauled on land for storage. The last piece we manually pull up onto the beach.

• Storage - everything from the outside gets moved in.  That includes picnic tables, sports equipment, chairs, paddleboards, etc.

• Winterize and store the boat - You cannot just plop the boat on land and leave it until the spring.  Because the engine uses lake water for cooling it needs to be drained and flushed or else trapped water could freeze and burst portions of the engine. We also have six ballast tanks and bags that fill with water to create our epic wakes which have to be flushed with antifreeze as well.  This year the boat is being stored indoors so no shrink-wrapping!

I will post more pictures throughout the winter! Happy Thanksgiving!

-Evan

2015 season recap

The 2015 Water Monkey Camp season was super fun: below is a quick recap of what we got up to this year.

We were finally able to move to our new, permanent location and it blew away all of our expectations with campers and staff making the most of it each day.  The extra space, idyllic lakeside location, and upscale cottages gave everyone something (or many things) to be constantly smiling about...not to mention the two ridiculous wake boats on our private beach and dock with boards and gear for days!

(At the bottom of this post are links to all pictures from 2015)

Our pristine lake and gorgeous setting are part of what makes camp amazing so we do everything we can to keep camp 'green'.  This year we saved over 4,800 miles of driving and 300 gallons of fuel by moving to our new property and not driving back and forth to the lake each day.  Our boats still consumed 1675 gallons of gas over eight weeks which produced roughly 15 metric tons of CO2.  We offset that pollution by planting 200 trees through CarbonFund.org (50 extra to help cover camper travel to/from camp).  On top of that we also changed all of the lightbulbs on the new property to CFLs or LEDs, reducing approximately 80% of the power required to light the camp at night.

Many thanks to all of our campers and their families for coming to camp, to my all-star staff for working 24 hours a day to give our campers the time of their lives, and my friends and family for endless support and unpaid manual labor.

Here are some fun stats:

• 60% new campers, 40% returners (big growth year for us!)
• Campers came from 12 states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Vermont) as well as Canada, Colombia, France, Italy, Mexico, and Switzerland!
• Campers were 70% boys, 30% girls.
• Average camper age was 14.02702.
• Average number of campers per week was 11.02 (that means lots of boat time for each camper).
• 0 hospital visits!
• One (almost) runaway camp fire.
• Infinite jokes.
• 14,218 unique visitors to www.watermonkeycamp.com in the past 12 months.
• 3,195 meals served by our amazing and creative chef Jessica!
• Approximately 1,440 eggs cracked (give or take a dozen).
• 56 gallons of milk poured (give or take a few gallons).
• 205 hours of shredding on the Axis A22 and 135 hours on the Centurion!
• 35 group stretching sessions.
• 1 sighting of the Aurora Borealis.

Next summer is our 5 year anniversary and we are gearing up for our best and biggest season ever.  We just purchased a brand new, 2016 Mastercraft NXT 22 (http://www.mastercraft.com/boat/detail/nxt22) to go along with our 2015 Axis A22.  This boat has a mellow but crisp wake for wakeboarding and the Mastercraft Gen 2 Surf System for perfect waves.  I know that our campers will love this boat!  On top of that we just ordered a new quiver of wake surf boards from Phase 5 and a whole new line of 2016 wakeboards and bindings from Liquid Force.

Word of mouth referrals are our greatest recruiting tool so please spread the word to friends, family, coworkers, and strangers on the street who may enjoy our program!

Feel free to call or e-mail any time and when you are ready to book your week(s) for 2016 hit me up and I will get it sorted!

Sincerely,

Evan Goldner (owner/director)

617-855-WAKE (9253)

evan@watermonkeycamp.com

Links below to pictures from 2015!

Week 2   Week 3   Week 4   Week 5   Week 6   Week 7   Week 8

Stay up to date with what we're up to!

Obviously we have not had much time this summer to update this blog with the goings-on of Water Monkey Camp.  Good thing we've been upping our Instagram game so our followers can experience camp vicariously through our pictures. Instagram: https://instagram.com/watermonkeycamp/

We also update Facebook on a fairly regular basis: https://www.facebook.com/watermonkeycamp

So follow us and don't miss out on the fun!

New counselor profile - Ryan Suplee

Ryan has been a professional wake board/waterski coach for over a decade and has spent his entire life in, behind, or around boats growing up in the heart of the Lakes Region of New Hampshire.  Ryan first started his coaching career down at the famed Orlando Watersports Complex where he worked on their boat as well as their cable park helping anyone from absolute beginners to semi-pro riders looking to tweak their style.  From OWC he made his way out to High Cascade camp in Oregon where he again taught riding/skiing on their boat.  After a brief stint of being a surf bum in Hawaii, Ryan made his way back to New Hampshire where he has been coaching privately for the past couple of years.  He is pumped to progress our program and give our campers the instruction and support they need to achieve their watersports goals.  (Red Cross Lifeguard/CPR, Commercial Boat Driver)

Ryan also loves to fish and hopes to get a chance to teach our campers some fly-fishing techniques this summer.