Quote:
Originally Posted by Skip
when is the last time you and I wholeheartedly agreed on a post?  |
Who's in agreement?
1) I'd always taken great pride watching NH boaters removing flood debris from an otherwise pristine Lake Winnipesaukee and putting it inside their own boats.
That still occurs, but with the delicate graphics, hand-rubbed gelcoat polishings and white vinyl bolsters of too many visiting boaters, it's hardly becoming a widespread practice.
2) For 46 consecutive summers, living lakeside at the same spot on Lake Winnipesaukee one would expect a different perspective.
On August 08, 2002—with a letter to the editor—
I called it right.
The title, "Anarchy and Mayhem" did reflect the unhappy condition that reigned too long on these waters: "Noise and Action" actually appeared as a Winnipesaukee headline in a major New Hampshire newspaper. (And at the
forum).
3) Putting out "The
Unwelcome Mat" seems to have moderated visitors whose recent inland-waters attitude was contrary to what I'd seen all those years on Lake Winnipesaukee—
directly before me, my extended family and guests.
At the same time, I was privy to the same boats on "big-water" off Florida's sandy coastlines. We don't have sandy shorelines to catch our navigational errors here—and nothing approaches the "big-water"
there.
When some boats on our inland waters rival
military boats in appearance and performance, one can expect a gloomy assessment by residents.
With all the paint, show, pretense, and noise, "stolen valor" comes to mind.
4) Navigation spars were made of wood just ten years ago: many of those wooden spars soared high above the heads of most boats' captains.
Just ten years ago,
nobody complained of "not-seeing" Winnipesaukee's wood spars, which would lean-over alarmingly!
Waterlogged, they were like "dead-heads"—or even dull lances pointed at the gunwales of Winnipesaukee's over-sized boats.
Colliding with those waterlogged spars must have been a wake-up call to our visiting boaters.
As the years progressed, a growing number of spars were "made invisible" by breaking-off through collisions: Today,
Maine's H&H Propeller service actually operates a delivery shuttle service that brings a brisk and booming replacement-propeller business to Lake Winnipesaukee's boat dealers.
*Shrug*.
When the majority of boats on the lake were wooden boats, you didn't take the chance of making splinters with those wood markers—that were not unlike telephone poles—anchored in large numbers around Lake Winnipesaukee.
5) I would never say that the lake has
always been safe: it's a scenic lake with recently-added distractions—that hadn't included gauges and electronics that glow—to rob one's night-vision.
Future Winnipesaukee headlines should be less unnerving to us but you can count on
some boater about to make headlines.