Waterfront living.

We’re finally getting our waterfront lifestyle together.  We’ve had a small boat for a while.  And our house has a boat ramp.  It’s not so easy, however, to put the boat in and out of the water, since we don’t have a truck with a hitch (and since I don’t really want a truck running over my labyrinth several times a week).

So, we had to put up a boat lift.

No sooner did we get that done than all kinds of things got in the way of excursions.  We had company.  We had to go on a series of trips.  The weather has been god-awful hot, and who wants to be out on the water in the baking sun under those conditions?  We had other house projects that needed work.  And then, it rained.  Day after day.  (The grass is looking good–but then, you have to mow the grass.)

All of this is leading up to today’s Monday Miracle–which is the latest improvement to the whole boating thing.

We got a trolling motor.  A Minn-Kota Edge. Yesterday, we took it on a shake-down cruise.

It works great!

It’s bow-mounted, and so easy to put in and out of the water.  Five speeds, forward and reverse, so it can get you moving pretty fast–if that’s what you want.  And it’s so quiet.

This is how I like to travel by boat.  I prefer the slow speed.  And the quietness is great.  We came right up on some manatees just hanging out in the back part of the creek where there are no houses.  Because the motor is quiet, we could get fairly close.  Because it is slow, we were in no danger of injuring them.

I love having manatees in the back yard.  (The alligators–not so much.)

(Speaking of alligators and manatees, you can check out the Manatee Web Cam.  It’s off-season for manatees at Blue Spring, so they are alternating live manatee-less streams with some videos.  I like the one where the manatee chases the alligator out of the water — althoug, at my house, I’m hoping they just leave them in the water.)