Helloooo....calling all Lake Winnipesaukee waterfront property owners......... including the Town of Gilford.... and their lengthy 1100' long Gilford Town Beach located on Saunder's Bay: Is there anyone who will kindly donate their beautifull waterfront property to the State of New Hampshire for use as a state boat launch and home to a community sailing program? It's been done before; as far as I know, both Ellacoya on Winnipesaukee and Wellington State Park on Newfound were donated. It would probably be a very rare event for the State of NH to go out and actually pay money for a new state park facility since they are very challenged to maintain the asphalt roof shingles and exterior paint on the state park buildings they already have.
Maybe
www.gilfordnh.org could volunteer the last 300', of their huge 1100' town beach, over on its' north end that is closer to
www.silversands.com marina, since that end is usually pretty quiet and gets a lot less use? Could be a good spot as it geographically central on the lake, and very close to the existing
www.lwsa.org location at
www.faysboatyard.com. Say, isn't it closer to the Lake Winnipesaukee Sailing Assoc home port at Fay's than the proposed new home for community sailing at
www.nhstateparks.com/ellacoya.html. You know it is much much closer!
.........
I have no clue as to whether the Town of Gilford's ice skating arena, which is directly across from Fay's Boat Yard on Varney Point Rd gets any use? Does it get any use? Do children or adults use it for hockey, figure, synchronized, or recreational ice skating, or for broom ball? Anybody know?
It is semi-enclosed with a shed style roof overhead and has no mechanical ice refrigeration and depends on cold natural temperatures to freeze the ice. Does it have a Zamboni? There is a new indoor ice arena that is refrigerated, heated, and Muzaked, all at the same time, over at Plymouth State University in Plymouth, Rt 93-Exit 25, which opened last November, 2010, and it cost approximately 14-million dollars to construct this new ice arena building. So, maybe Gilford has decided to bus their hockey team over to the new PSU rink in Plymouth....I don't know? Another new indoor refrigerated ice arena is planned for the New Hampton private school in New Hampton, close to Exit 23, so that's another skating venue that is maybe now under construction(?).
It's certainly no secret that a NH State boat launch facility would compete with marina's like Fay's Boat Yard who charge to launch boats and also pay very hefty property taxes.
Here's a thought; tear down the Town of Gilford Ice Skating Arena that occupies three acres on Varney Point Rd, across from Fay's Boat Yard, and use the land to access the northern 300' of the Town Beach for a Gilford based, community sailing program, and just forget about building a state boat launch on Lake Winnipesaukee for now...what-so-ever!
If trailer-boaters want a freebie State of NH boat launch, they already have one at Lakes Winnisquam, Newfound, Squam, and the one that's now under construction (?) at Lake Sunapee. Launching onto the Big lake is available at lots of different pay-to-launch boat ramp locations, and sometimes when there's no attendant around, it's a freebie launch, like most Mon-Fridays at the Center Harbor ramp.
What the heck, the
www.squamlakes.org/programs/boating.php is a terrific community sailing program and is located on a beautifull small cove inlet on Big Squam Lake in Holderness, and it is not all that far up Rt 3 from Meredith. So, why begin to bother with siting, funding, and constructing a Lake Winnipesaukee community sailing program anywho? Why even bother?
Why the heck all these different NH municipalities do not just install those WMNF - U.S. Forest Service style money deposit boxes next to their public boat ramps and simply charge 5-bucks to either launch or load, NO EXCEPTIONS FOR NO ONE!, is a good question, but that's a good question for another day!
