What have we done to the dock at the cabin over the years?

Opening weekend, May 7 and 8. Earl had the water on by Thursday.

One mouse nest in the silverware drawer. The screen on the lake-side bedroom window is torn at the corner. Ray patched it; needs replacing.

Dock: three deck boards soft at the shore end. Ray replaced them Sunday morning with 2x6 cedar from Lakeland Hardware, $41.16. He says the cribs underneath are the real problem.

Left up north for next time: the porch chairs still in the boathouse, the screens for the kitchen windows, the bird feeders.

The dock. Per Ray: the shore crib lifted 4 inches last spring when the ice went late. Third section is out of level 2 1/2 inches over 8 feet. Two posts are rotted at the waterline. It can be shimmed one more year. It should not be.

The old dock is 40 feet and was here when we bought the place.

Quote from Pike Bay Dock & Marine: a 48-foot aluminum roll-in dock, six 8-foot sections, with decking and a bench at the end, installed, and the old wooden dock hauled away. $6,400.00.

Decided: yes, for next June. I am to telephone Pike Bay in March.

The new dock went in yesterday, Saturday, June 14. Pike Bay, three men and a trailer.

Per Ray:
- Six sections, 8 feet each, 48 feet. Aluminum frame. Decking panels lift out.
- Wheels on the lake end. Rolls in and out on its own axle. Earl and his boy will do it spring and fall.
- Legs adjust with a crank. Deck set 14 inches above the water at the end. Check level every Memorial Day.
- Bench bolts on at the last section. Comes off for winter.
- Frame warranty 15 years. Decking 5.
- $6,400.00, as quoted. Paid by cheque.

They took the old wooden dock away in pieces. One crib is still there under the water and Ray says it can stay.

Family week 2017. Twelve of us.

- The swim ladder. Ray bolted it to the fourth section of the dock on July 1, on the left side going out: aluminum, four steps, flips up out of the water. $149.00 at Northwoods Sport & Marine.
- Loons: one chick, hatched about June 10.
- Walleye for twelve: 22 fillets.
- Sleeping as last year, except Lucas (nearly 4) on the cot in his parents' room.

For next year there will be thirteen. Where a baby and two more adults are to sleep is a question for the winter.

Per Ray: the weather station, put up yesterday.

- Sensors (wind, rain, temperature, humidity) on a mast on the dock post at the shore end, 9 feet above the water. Solar, with a backup battery: one CR-123, change every two years.
- Console on the kitchen wall by the window. Three C batteries. It also plugs in.
- Range is 300 feet. It is 62 feet. Fine.
- Rain gauge: clean the cone every month. Spiders.
- The sensor mast comes OFF the post when the dock is rolled out and goes in the boathouse.
- Console records highs and lows. He copies them into the log on Sunday nights.

First reading: 48 degrees, wind northwest 9, gusting 17.

A second boat. Ray bought the Hendricksons' pontoon yesterday.

What it does to the dock, done this morning by Ray and Travis Koskinen:
- The last two sections were unbolted and turned to make an L, pointing left (west), so the pontoon lies along the inside of the L and the Lund keeps the right side of the straight part.
- Four new cleats, two on the L and two on the straight.
- Three white bumpers on the L, hung at the height of the pontoon's rail.
- The bench stays at the end of the straight part. The swim ladder had to move one section toward shore.

It is 32 feet straight and 16 across the end now, instead of 48 straight.

Telephone Linda about adding the pontoon to the boat policy. Done Monday; both are on it.

Closed today, after 24 weeks. The summer in numbers:

- Days here: 168.
- Loaves from Sigrid: 31.
- Walleye kept: 43 (Ray's count; mine is lower).
- Masks sewn here: 96, on top of the 214 at home.
- Quilts finished: one, and most of another.
- Books read: 37.
- Loon chicks: two hatched, two raised, both gone south by the first week of October.
- People inside the cabin other than ourselves: nine, for one week in July.
- Fish fry from the Thirsty Loon, in boxes, on the tailgate with Bev and Arnie: 14 Fridays.

New on the dock this year: six solar lights, one on each post down the straight part, which Ray put on in June.

Both boats went to Pike Bay on Thursday.

Family week 2024, June 29 to July 6. Fourteen.

- NEW RULE, as of Saturday morning: no lures, hooks or rigged rods are left on the dock, ever. They go in the boathouse on the rack. Birdie found a lure of Lucas's at six in the morning and put a treble hook through her lip. The emergency vet in Minocqua (open all night; the number is on the refrigerator now) had it out by eight: a little sedative, the barb cut off, the hook backed out. $286.00.
- Loons: two chicks.
- Hannah (15) painted the dock from the end of it on Friday evening. Acrylic, 16 x 20. It is ours, and it is to be framed.
- Walleye: 26 fillets.
- The porch slept five; the tent slept two. Nate's price for making the shed into a bunkhouse came in June and Ray has said yes, for next spring.

The dock has a handrail as of today, for Arnie. He came home Friday, walking with a cane, the left hand slow.

Per Ray:
- On OUR dock, since Arnie's has steps down to it and ours has the ramp. He will fish from here.
- Along the right side of the first three sections, 24 feet, from the shore to where the pontoon ties up.
- Aluminum pipe, 1 1/2 inch, on five posts clamped to the frame. Nothing drilled; the frame warranty stays good.
- 36 inches high. Same as a wheelchair ramp.
- It unbolts in three pieces for the fall.

The pontoon has a gate and flat floor, so Arnie can step straight across from the dock. The Lund he cannot manage.

I have moved the bench so that there is somewhere to sit halfway.

The dock: one of the leg brackets on the fifth section has worn loose, so that the section rocks when Owen runs on it. Ray shimmed it with a washer and wants to know whether the frame is still under warranty before he does anything more permanent.

From memory, since the papers are in Madison: the frame is guaranteed 15 years and the decking was 5. The dock went in in June 2015, the same spring as the Lund, so the frame should be covered until June 2030.

Telephone Rod at Pike Bay on Monday and ask whether a bracket counts as frame. The wheels did not, in 2022.