THE GHEENOE - AT LAST; ESCAPE!

Today is a great day! Today I am again able to explore the magic of the lakes. The Gheenoe has arrived and I have tested it out on Melton Hill Lake. I really missed the ability to escape the noise and confusion of traffic and gobs of people. I missed the photo opportunities that nature provides. As a matter of fact, at the bottom of this blog entry I was rewarded with an unexpected treat. It caught me off guard and the camera wasn't ready but I snapped off a few shots of a swimming deer. Not unusual but sort of different as it was noon. The Gheenoe is of the custom variety and is powered by a 25 horsepower four stroke Honda engine. With only me and an empty boat the top speed is 29 to 30 mph in slight chop. Loaded with all the stuff I like, the speed dropped to 28 mph with an occasional 29 mph showing on the GPS. She has an 11 gallon inboard tank in the bow and I am proud to say the needle barely moved in three hours. Wow! I can afford to run it. Today is just a test run but full scale camping adventures off this little boat are coming up. By the way; the cliff on the lake is the same one that my Golden Retriever, Douglas, stepped off onto from the government boat in the story "The Storm" that I wrote two years ago. He was six months old then. That story is on the blog in the achieves. I almost ran into that cliff in dense fog during a terrible storm that Douglas and I got caught in a year later.