I was heartened to read Peter Erb’s “Wake boats and the taking of our Vermont waters.” As a small homeowner on Echo Lake, I’ve seen the damage a wake boat can do.
This past July 13, a wake boat cruised by a few times at a reasonable speed, maybe 300 feet or more from our shore. Still the 3-foot-plus waves damaged the dock’s pontoons and bent the galvanized pipes supporting our dock.
When my daughter and I canoed down the lake and spotted the boat, we spoke with two gentlemen: the boat owner and the lake house owner. The former was pleasant enough, but said that as long as his boat was legal, he intended to use it. He added that he couldn’t use it at the south end of the lake (too narrow) or near the state park directly across from us at the wider end of the lake, 1,100 feet.
The lake house owner dropped by our place the next day with a Vermont Sports article about wake boats possibly being allowed on larger lakes, with the wrong Echo Lake circled — the 530-acre Charleston one, not the 96-acre Plymouth one we’re on. His comment about our damaged dock was that it was “chintzy.”
The next day I wrote a lengthy letter to the owner, but in the interest of time, I’ll quote my daughter Diane, who puts things more succinctly: “I explained (after he called our dock ‘chintzy’) that my dad was in Connecticut for a few days, and putting in a sturdier dock would take time and money and could not be done before they planned on taking the boat out again. I explained that the boat mucks up the water. I brought him down to the dock and showed him the damage that had already been done. Sounds like (the homeowner) owns the house, but (the wake boat owner) takes his boat around to different lakes. I asked (the homeowner, who owns a ski boat) to please consider using just the ski boat instead of the wake boat. He said he and his friend were going to keep using the wake boat as long as it was legal and we would have to agree to disagree.”
A damaged dock is a small matter, but Mr. Erb’s seven-point proposal would protect property and so much more.
John Hennelly
Plymouth