The first trip of the season is always a nail-biter: is the boathouse still standing?  Has a tree fallen on a cabin?  Has the roof been leaking for 6 months on the main camp?

When we boated in for Memorial Day week, I was relieved to see the boathouse still on its cribbing.  But the dock caught my eye right away.  In dozens of trips to Starkey's the main dock has never been an issue.  But somehow, this year, the foam floats under the landward section of the dock worked their way free and blew away.

​The floats -- 8 feet long, 18 inches wide, and 7 inches thick -- were nowhere in sight.  It's an expensive loss: they cost about $120 each to replace and there were eight missing.

On a canoe trip the next day, we found that the staff at the Cranberry Lake Bio Station run by SUNY ESF had corralled the floats for us and left them safely tucked away in a cove across the bay.  Five of the eight floats were intact and none the worse for their frolic and detour.  The other three were in big-sized chunks that would be difficult to secure back under the dock.

We bought three replacement billets at Todd Supply in Star Lake, but there was still the question of how to get them back under the dock?  We couldn't just submerge them and push them under the dock, after all they are buoyant enough to hold the dock well up out of the water.  And without any floats under the dock, it was nearly submerged.

Our answer was to lift the dock up with improvised jacks on four corners, slide the floats under, and lower the dock back down.  We bought four bolt-on lashing winches (like truckers use on flat-bed trailers to secure loads) and four heavy-duty tow straps rated for 3,000 lbs each.  Each winch was mounted at the top between two wooden posts that straddle the ledger boards on the dock.  The posts sit on plywood weight-spreading pads on the lakebed.  Thankfully the dock is in shallow water so we could get by with 8-foot tall jacking posts.

This system worked beautifully.  We jacked the dock up about 16 inches until there was enough room to shove the floats under the ledger boards, then lowered the dock back down.

The ice went out late this year on Cranberry, so we didn't make it up until Memorial Day week.  The weather was terrific: warm, sunny days with only a night or two of rain.  There was almost no one on the lake, so we had a peaceful week at Starkey's.

We washed windows, swept and aired cabins, raked paths, and cleaned decks.  We also installed four new solar panels on the boathouse roof, and there's room for more.

We're also in the process of replacing the camp's signature hemlock beam steps, seen outside every cabin and the main camp.  This trip we replaced two steps in front of Marcy cabin with beams hauled out to the camp last fall (see previous post).  These beams have had about eight months to dry out, so they were (a little bit) lighter.  Cut to length, they could be maneuvered into place by one person and a hand-truck.

We're looking forward to meeting new guests and greeting returning groups this summer.  See you in a short couple months!

Our 2018 season filled up by December, the earliest we've experienced in five years of rentals.  Feel free to contact us if you want to hear about any cancellations, otherwise we are accepting bookings for Summer 2019.  If you're interested please head over to our rental site, www.vrbo.com/504304.  Thank you!

Photos from our October trip. It's a magical time of year, between the colors and the solitude, arguably the best time to be at Starkey's Point.

Legend is this boat hauled all the materials to build Starkey's Point. It's a 25-foot Grumman pontoon, new in the '80s, with a 45-horse four-stroke Honda outboard. It has no benches, no sun shade, no radio. We love it.

Here's to another 30 years of trusty service.

This year we painted the main camp's south side. Even with the overhang, the doors have taken a beating from the sun and were in desperate need of protection. We've decided to simplify the color scheme here by painting the doors, windows, and trim in the plum color already used on the windows.

We power-washed the siding, scrubbed and sanded the doors and windows, and got to painting. The live edge siding is getting another coat of semi-transparent stain.

We're very pleased with the finished product! Next year we'll get to the north side.

We also had to make some emergency repairs to the boathouse central walkway. Unlike last summer, when low lake levels were perfect for repairing cribbing, the water levels this year were above normal and air temps on the cooler side. Still, this project went quickly and we now have a much sturdier gangway.

More structural repairs were in order for the south side deck, which was feeling kind of spongy under foot near the east side railing. We pulled the deck boards off, shored up the joists, and added a concrete support under the rim joist.

We took the opportunity to replace some cracked deck boards, then put everything back together before doing touch-up painting.

Here's a beautiful photo of Frank Starkey, for whom Starkey's Point is named, looking dapper in a canoe on Cranberry many moons ago. This photo appears in the book "Boats and Boating on Cranberry Lake" by Alan P. Splete (buy it on Amazon), which we recently bought for Starkey's Point. I am so grateful to Alan for hunting this photo down, the only one I've seen of Frank.

At a guess, Frank here is paddling from the direction of Deremo Point toward Buck Island with the eastern-most tip of Joe Indian Island visible behind him and the rising slope of Bear Mountain in the background.

Happy trails Frank.

We opened the camp this past weekend, Memorial Day. Everything was in good order from our close-up last fall. Our visit was cut short by work schedules, but we'll be up again in June before the first guests arrive.

Send us an email through our contact page with any questions, we're looking forward to seeing returning groups, and meeting all the new guests!

We closed up the camp over Columbus Day weekend in October and enjoyed beautiful fall colors. With low rainfall in the Adirondacks this summer, the lake level was probably two feet below normal, exposing shoreline we rarely see. The low water opened a causeway across to the neighboring island, prompting an exploratory visit on foot.

The cabins are all closed up now, we had another wonderful season. Thanks to all the guests who made 2016 so memorable. We look forward to seeing returning faces next summer. Here's to 2017,

Aaron, Tammy, and Lila.

We just got back from more than two weeks at the camp where we enjoyed beautiful sunny days, starry nights, and mist off the lake in the mornings. By the close of Labor Day weekend, we were even starting to see red and yellow hues in the trees across the bay.

But, this was also a work trip with a few important tasks: replacing the cribbing under the northeast corner of the boathouse, installing new lights and doing some painting in the kitchen, cleaning and painting the decks outside the main camp, and replacing the back porch step.

The corner cribbing at the boathouse was close to collapse by the end of the season. I picked up 6 x 6 in. hemlock beams from a local sawmill and boated them across the lake. We now have enough to replace the remaining front cribs, although those are still in decent shape and don't need immediate attention.

We jacked up the corner of the boathouse, removed the old cribbing, and cut and installed new cribbing the same footprint before setting the boathouse corner back down. Replace the trim boards and some touch-up painting, now both bays are back in service. Thanks to my dad Andrew for all his help with this!

We also power-washed the decks at the main camp, primed, then painted with two coats of a heavy-duty deck paint. The decks look nice and fresh.

Since we put in the new range and kitchen cabinets, we've been meaning to remove the old stove-pipe adapter in the ceiling and add a new recessed light above that work space. The existing recessed light over the sink was replaced with a matching LED trip kit, the wall above the sink was re-painted, the outlets upgraded to code-compliant GFCI, and plate covers switched out.

Those were the big projects for this trip, thanks for reading all the way through! Hope to see you next season, Aaron & Tammy.