Old news from Michael's Marine Service on Lake George NY:
News archives from 2001
9/17/01 Another Labor Day has come and
gone. The Adirondack Nationals Car Show weekend in Lake George proved to
be the busiest event the town has seen in years, personally I think that there
were more people than even the Americade brings to town. Several of our
customers entered vehicles in this years event. Michael has spent a
lot of time early this fall on a 1927 Gar Wood engine. It's a twelve
cylinder airplane motor sporting twin distributors. The firing order
diagram looks like a Spiro-graph picture. The original owners manual has a
"Don'ts Page" which gives a lot of practical advice. A couple of
my favorites are "Don't be one of those fellows that only has two speeds -
full speed and stopped. You will tend to be stopped most of the
time." The other very common sense advice is "Don't check
your gas tank with a lit match." As expected Michael rises to the
occasion and the boat is running "better than it ever has" (statement
from owner). In other news from the shop - Rickie is back to college and
will be helping out part time, Jesse is back to school also and spends
every afternoon (well almost) on the golf course as part of the Lake George High
School Golf Team. Michael Jr. is working on a project boat, a 25' gutted
Galaxy. So far he has replace the cabin wall and is redesigning the
cockpit. Rumor has it at the range that Bill and Jesse have both been seen
practicing - who will get the biggest buck this year?
8/05/01 Wow - it is August already!
Hard to believe its time to begin thinking about hauling out the boats
already. Please read your package carefully this year. We are going
to start a new system. There will be a limit on boats each week so make
sure to get your dates picked early and your paper work back to us as soon as
possible.
July proved to be a busy and interesting month work wise, from
installations of Vacuflush Systems, Air Conditioning Systems, Kohler Generators,
Transmission Repairs, Engine Installation, Sterndrive Repairs, to the painting
of the S-2 mast, along with endless other little odds and ends repairs and
installations.
6/26/01 June has been a busy month, considering the weather has been mostly rain. The few nice days we have had are hot and humid. The S-2 finally got a name - Wanderer, and the second gold stripe. The mast should be ready soon. The shop is full of projects as usual. I will give a better update in a couple days.
6/03/01 From my keyboard to mother natures
ears - no more comments about not getting enough rain. Memorial Day Weekend was
pretty wet! We have caught up on the rain fall totals for the year in the last two
weeks. The diesel engine work on Indian Pipes was completed and she is back on the
lake doing charters! It's Americade week already -- nothing like 50,000 motorcycles
in town for a week. The usual mix of summer work is already upon us - the S-2
that was in the shop last year is getting some more makeovers. We will be adding a
gold stripe on the sides up near the top and repainting the mast. We have a Maxum in
the shop that we have done the bottom on, removed all the rails, windshield and arch and
recaulked. A new set of controls and a wax job and there will be one more boat on
the lake.
Summer is just around the corner and we have a lot of different jobs going on, it's a
virtual potpourri of work - just what we like!
5/23/01 Memorial Day Weekend is here, what a short
launch. The weather isn't looking to promising for the holiday, but we haven't had
any real rainfall in almost a month. On Monday May 14th we moved Indian Pipes from
our shop to the water. 
There are still a lot of boats to launch before this Friday and a lot of
service work.
5/11/01 It has been a busy month! We have commissioned over 200 boats since April 23, along with everything else we have to do we have been working some crazy hours. The last big week of launching will be here this Monday and then things should get back to normal. Project Indian Pipes is almost complete, we will be moving the Albin 36 out of the shop and into the water. The weather has been great here - August like. I am sure mother nature will bring fall real soon.
4/28/01 Launch has finally started! It was necessary for Harris Bay to delay one week because of the weather and ice conditions. We have commissioned over 50 boats this week and placed them in there slips and managed to keep up with all our other service work like repairs, shrinkwrap removal and detailing.
4/2/01 Winter is still here. We had snow
flurries this morning. March snowfall total left us with twenty inches more than
normal for the month. Today's high temperature is
37 degrees. Last year
on this date the low was 37 degrees and the high was 53 degrees.
Here is a shot of the lake today: 
Usually the lake looks black by now.
The only spot open at the marina is the launch ramp, thanks to bubblers. 
That doesn't leave much room to put boats in.
It is going to have to get real warm real fast if we are going to start launching soon.
Look at the banks between these 1st week boats: 
Makes you want to hurry up
and get them uncovered doesn't it. Well unless things take a drastic change for the
better, I don't think we will be on time with launch. Trying to walk in the yard is
just plain impossible. Mike and the guys are out there working, I don't know how
they do it. With highs in the upper 30's there is no way I'm getting any
waxing done, which is the last thing I want to get behind on. The good news is this
can't last forever. It will soon be just a memory - like the six inches of heavy wet
snow we got last year on April 9th.
3/21/01 SPRING IS HERE!!! Well someone should tell mother nature that because it's snowing right now. We are supposed to get 6 to 10 inches of wet heavy snow. Another boat just left the shop and two more came in. We have managed to find a few nice days to do some work in boats out in the yard. Unfortunately the snow piles between the boats is still a couple feet deep which makes working in the yard almost impossible. Project Trawler is getting closer to completion, the latest on it is that new brackets had to be custom built for the new swimplatform.
3/7/01 Now you can shop for your boating needs online. Check out our
online catalog. Also the Kohler Generator sale prices have been extended until
March 27th. 20+inches of snow arrived here over a twenty-four hour period beginning March
5th.
A new swimplatform is the next item for Indian Pipes, you can see a sample of the work that is both in progress and completed by clicking here. The F32 Trojan project has been completed and we are moving different boats into the shop.
2/19/01 Indian Pipes is looking so much better! The newest project boat is
a F32 Trojan. The interior had to be disassembled so the rub rail could be removed.
Sections needed to be replaced and it will be reassembled with new backing boards
and hardware, at the same time we will do all the stantion bases because we now have
access to them. A lot of stuff is going on simultaneously at the shop from engine
rebuilds, generator repairs and sterndrive work. The Kohler sale is still on until March 1st.
1/27/01 The winter is flying by. Mike has attended Kohler School and will be back
to work soon. He tells me that Kohler
has extended its boat show pricing on generators until March 1st, so if you have been
sitting on the fence now is the time to buy! Rickie is back at College, Bill
is working away on the Donzi, Mike Jr. and Roger are making good progress on the work on Indian
Pipes, and lucky Jesse gets to spend his days with his buddies at school. We
will be moving stuff around in the shop to get a couple more boats inside, so much
work...winter needs to be longer. I've been working on the spring schedule -
which is pretty full, and I've been busy adding useful links to our web site.
1/9/01 The New Year is here and yes, we are working hard. We finished painting
the work area of the shop and the first bay, we also repainted the walls in these
areas. The shop is full of boats, Mike is doing drive work, engine work, overseeing
all the other work at the shop and getting ready to leave for Kohler Generator school in a
couple weeks. Bill is busy on the Donzi and a Grady White, Mike Jr and Roger are
busy working on Indian Pipes. Rickie is
getting ready to head back to college in Charleston South Carolina but finds time to
supervise us all. Jesse is busy in school and with the bowling team. Me? Well I just
keep annoying everyone with my new digital camera along with the usual stuff.