Life on the Lake

The view from our lake house

I love being at the lake house. I spend part of every day sitting down by the dock, enjoying the sunshine and the nice breeze that blows off the water. I’ve gone for a dip in the lake almost every day. In fact, each morning when I wake up, I put on my bathing suit straight away because I know that we’ll be swimming before long. I like to take my book and read down on the little strip of beach in front of our dock. It’s so peaceful down there. You can hear the water lapping against the rocks and the occasional sounds of boats or jet-skis going by.

At night, you can hear the loons. They make a loud wailing sound that’s known as the cry of the loon. This year we’ve seen three or four loons swim right up close to our dock. They are such beautiful, majestic birds. Ducks are the kind of annoying creature we try to chase away from our dock, but we like to have loons around. Their cries at night are kind of frightening and haunting, but that’s part of the magic of the lake.

My mom got a new sailboat this year, a Hunter 15. Rigging the thing was a nightmare. My dad and I were utterly confused by the instruction booklet and we got frustrated at each other trying to figure out how everything went together. We called Rob, the president of the sailing club, and he came over to help us. When we finally got it rigged and started to sail off, we had a little mishap where we almost crashed into some rocks. We had to bring it back to the dock and start off again.

We’ve had a couple of windy days recently, and the Hunter is a beautiful sailboat- really fast and such an exciting ride! It’s a little scary too, because it’s bigger than our Sunfish. I’m afraid that if we make a mistake while sailing, there could be disastrous consequences. We’re still figuring out all the ins and outs of sailing this kind of boat. The hardest part is coming back into the dock. You have to steer it just right to bring the boat alongside the dock and it’s especially hard if the wind’s strong and the water’s rough. Hopefully we’ll get the hang of it soon, but in the meantime there have been some pretty funny (albeit scary) moments!