summer camp

2025 season recap

When I write these recaps I always start by scrolling through the thousands of pictures from the season. What is so amazing to me every year is that through sunshine and rain storms, chilly mornings and sweltering afternoons, beginners trying to get up for the first time and veterans messing around riding triples, new campers who show up alone and returners who seem to know everyone there is one constant…the ubiquitous signs of smiles, laughter and fun.

Water Monkey is a tiny camp but I truly believe that for the campers who find their way to us every summer there is no better place for them to be. I take tremendous pride in the experience we offer, the time we dedicate to each of our campers getting to learn and improve and to never cutting corners in our staffing, equipment, meals and safety. I hope that commitment to our campers - your kids - comes through when you hear their camp stories and scroll through the pictures each night when we upload them.

And now…stats from our 14th season of camp:

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

  • 88.89% full (112 spaces filled out of 126 with 104 unique campers)

  • Campers stayed an average of 1.15 weeks at camp

  • Average number of campers each week was 16.57

  • Campers were 69.29% boys and 30.71% girls

  • Average camper age was 13.73

  • 30.36% new campers and 69.64% returners

  • Campers came from 10 states (CO, CT, MA, ME, MN, NH, NJ, NY, PA and VT) as well as France.

  • 6 coaches, 1 chef and 1 director

  • Average coach age was 20.33

  • Campers come in all shapes and sizes so we used over 67 wakeboards / wakesurf boards / skis

    • 7 sizes of Liquid Force wakeboards (10 board setups in all) 

    • 14 models / sizes of Phase 5 wakesurf boards (47 boards in all)

    • 5 pairs of combo skis, 3 sizes of Radar slalom skis, 2 wakeskates

  • $undisclosed wagered in cabin poker

  • 0 days missed due to weather (14 weekends of rain before camp started!)

  • Average lake water temp during camp was about 81 degrees

  • 2760 homemade meals and 750 desserts served up lakeside

  • 35 5-gallon buckets of food scraps added to our brand-new compost pile, diverting about 500 lbs of waste from the landfill

  • 250 hours of private lessons on our boats and client boats

  • 8,905 pictures and videos uploaded and shared with our camp families

  • 11,000 visitors to www.watermonkeycamp.com in the past year (9,400 unique) spent an average of 79 seconds on the site and engaged 20,313 page views

  • 575 hours logged on our two Supra boats

  • 27.5 hours spent washing down the boats

  • Our boats had 11 oil changes, 5 raw water impellers and 5 fuel filters

  • 3,932.925 gallons of premium marine fuel burned by our boats producing roughly 34.94 metric tons of CO2 (77,030 pounds). We offset this pollution through a donation to CoolEffect.org of $635.12 which has been our charity of choice for over 12 years. We also made a $75 contribution to SELT to help in their effort to conserve the entire watershed around our amazing lake.

  • We have now offset roughly 500 metric tons (over 1.1 million pounds) of CO2 since 2012!

2026 will be our 15th season of camp! You can expect two brand-new 2026 Supra SV’s, all the boards and gear you can handle and, quite possibly, our best staff ever (we’ve already hired most of the staff)! As always, camp doesn’t happen without you so I sincerely hope to welcome each of our campers back for more good times at the lake.

-Evan

603-321-8327

NH weather curveball

Just when you think it’s safe to do some yardwork…surprise April snow storm!

The top two pics are on Friday when I was blissfully raking, trimming and cleaning the property. The bottom pics are what I woke up to on Saturday!

2025 Camp Prep

We are heading at mach 3 towards an amazing 14th season. Never have we had this many campers signed up by February! It has been great to speak with so many new and returning families and help make their summer plans come together. That said…it feels like I have so much to do before we open!

First off…

It’s still winter here! It has been years since our lake froze this thoroughly and (before the recent warm temps this week) we have been absolutely buried in snow. So I’ll have to chill on my property to-do list for now.

But elsewhere in camp prep we are blazing forward. We are half way towards completing our staff with some amazing new talent coming from near and far to coach our campers. I also searched the country and hired a passionate, funny and friendly new chef, Sandra, who I am so excited for you all to meet. Add to that new equipment en route from Supra, Phase 5, Liquid Force, Radar, Mission and Follow so that our campers and staff get the newest and best gear this summer. Our 2025 camp license has been sorted, our fire permit issued and our fishing license applied for and, for the 17th year in a row, I have a clean background check and can continue running summer camps in New Hampshire!

Over the next few weeks my #1 task is to find about three more coaches to join our team. We have had so many applications this year but are selective in who we take on. (If you know anyone 18-24 who fits the bill please send them our way and we will hook you up with our referral bonus if we hire them.) As soon as the snow is gone I will be tackling cabin maintenance, landscaping and a few small projects to make the place look perfect.

Helping me, as always, are my 7 and 8 year old boys, Finn and Kai, and my trusty old doggo Tuckerman.

Hit me up anytime with camp questions and I’ll try to keep this page updated as we get closer to camp.