this was the morning of june 28th, when the awesome jeff smith from his company JLS Marine boated over and installed our new boat lift. it was quite an exciting morning, and remarkable at how quickly he and his worker, Fred, were able to secure the lift.
fred is the one in the yellow shirt and Gilligan hat.
here’s the first video I took of the operation…
here, fred was steering the barge to get the lift in place.
ours is a super simple lift, no top, no mechanized lift, just a giant wheel that we’d have to turn to get the boat in and out of the water.
the second video.
the thing that I didn’t get any photos or video of, that I wish I did, is when jeff needed to straighten it out. instead of lifting it back out of the water, jeff jumped right in and held his breath, adjusting the front leg. you know he’s done that a whole lot, in order to accomplish that neat feat.
and before we knew it, they were sliding the boat onto the lift. so nice.
jeff waved as I continued to take photos…
…and off they went to their next job.
kevin practiced docking the boat into the lift; it’s a lot more exact that just docking at the dock with no lift, because it has to fit between the two boards. he said he did it about a dozen times, and then he came out with me so I could practice. I’ve gotten better at it, and i’m sure it’ll become easier after I’ve done it a whole lot.
right now it does take some energy to crank the boat all the way up and down, but it’s good exercise…but maybe next year we’ll add an electric component.
in the meantime kevin just launched his sailboat, so we’re all set for all kinds of boating.
ok then,
mrs. almost the middle of july hughes.