Re: calling all lake mead boaters! nevada
I think that's where we stopped with the great beach, just west of Hualapai bay. The SE tip of the island has an awesome beach that's really shallow, while the south side is plenty deep to beach the boat. If you stop there, you'll probably find evidence of my rug rats in the sand
Wednesday's SW 25-35MPH winds shouldn't be bad in your 25'er. We pressed out in our 18'er Monday with NW 30MPH winds, and we had the wind coming from the "wrong" direction. We were running down hill though...
Have a good time out there!
Man did we have a rough time! This is long winded, but here was our 24 hour trip to TB-
Spare tire mount broke between ranger station and store. Kids in car behind us retrieved it.
Set out with gusts to 30. Had a rough time picking my son up at the dock, boat died and wouldn't crank and blew into dock and added some pinstripes to the starboard side. Boat then cranked and started and we headed for Hualapai. Too windy so we decided to get into the bay on the north side of the temple. Bad idea to cross a large body of water. Then the wind really picked!
We were just west of the temple with storm clouds to the se and sw in 5' + swells and it dies again. I thought my wife, daughter and grandson were going to die of fright. My son tried to keep them calm while we were falling left and right in the waves. I got on channel 16 and notified the NPS of our situation. They kept in contact and let us know that they didn't have any rangers in the area.
As I was looking at the boulders that the wind would likely force us into I tried the key again for the 20th time or so and it fired. We got back into little burro bay and figured that we'd hunker down. We anchored and floated for about an hour and figured we just stay there for the night.
Then it got worse. So windy even in a narrow, shallow area that we couldn't get the anchor to hold. We circled around and tried to find a spot where my son could get off of the bow and try to put stakes in the rock to tie off to and as we approached, it died again. This time we were blown aground and dead in the water.
We tried to push off with the dock hook and it wouldn't budge. After about 10 minutes it fired again. Wife and son climbed into the water and pushed us off the rocks. I decided that our only resolve was to get back to the marina. We headed back out toward the bigger water and advised the NPS of our status. After getting near the temple, it was real bad still and my wife said that she couldn't go through that again. We went back and circled around in the small water and called NPS again. I figured it would be better to get family into a safer boat and pay for a tow before it died again.
The NPS contacted the marina and they called me back and said that they didn't want to send his guys out in this weather. At that point I decided to just go for it and head directly into the wind and wherever I ended up, hug the shoreline back to the marina. By the time we got back into temple bay, the waves were down to 3' and the gusts had backed off. The wind was coming straight from the marina and we slowly crossed and made it back to the dock.
Another wind storm came up and we had to stay tied to dock while trailer sat ready. I walked over to marina office dock to see about renting a slip for the night and sign said closed due to weather. So we loaded it in the wind on third attempt. Rented a RV space in the trailer spaces next to Parrot Heads place and camped for the night.
This morning started out with 20 mph winds as we ate breakfast in the boat and watched the white caps from the camp site. We waited until after 9:00 and the wind kept blowing. Another boater that stayed grounded the day before stopped by and said that he wasn't going out again today. Forecast for tomorrow is t-storms. We decided lesson learned and packed it up glad to have survived.
That was a scary day. Hoped to get some good pics, but this was all I could get.
