I, Trekker: Out on Tippy I

On Sunday we hauled our canoe up from our swamped-in dock and drove it to the nearest boat ramp on Lake Hartwell. The thing's a bit heavy so we don't do this often, but it's nice to get out on the water on just about anything that'll float. The canoe happens to have been christened "Tippy I" by Corey who I think thinks anything floating on a V-hull is tippy. Hence most of our watercraft are "Tippy" (with the exception of the sailboat, which is "Pudgy" :) In the distance ahead of Corey you can see we're headed toward our community dock, where we normally keep Tippy II, our powerboat that we removed a couple of weekends ago. Good thing too since yet more of the boat ramp was now exposed.

One reason we wanted to get out on Hartwell was to see just how low the water has dropped. It's down by about 10 feet presently, which is a lot (we are in an exceptional drought condition). Just across from the ramp a "new" island had popped up. When we were about to trailer the boat the depth alarm had sounded over this bit of dirt ("mielizna" in Polish)—it had never sounded there before. Now we got a good glimpse of the cause of the alarm. One more week and we may have grounded the engine fin. Once we got to our subdivision, we cruised around to see the state of our community dock. There's still water, but maybe only 6 feet of depth at the farthest slips. Our slip is one of the farthest (deepest) ones out. Right now one of our neighbors has his pontoon boat in it since his dock is on dry land.

Around our neighbors' docks we picked up a little passenger that was swimming along the canoe. It's a green anole (anolis carolinensis) although we just call them geckos. I didn't know they could swim. This little guy was doing ok, so I'm not sure whether I helped him by fishing him out, or whether impeded his progress. In any case, he seemed to welcome the rest. You can see the gecko on my shoulder and our neighbour's beached dock just beyond.