Boat Lift Fiasco

Several weeks ago when I was in Dallas, I received word from my realtor that the boat lift (and the boat) at the lake house was in danger of being swept away due to flooding on Lake Wisconsin and the Wisconsin River.

After following up for more information, I was eventually able to get ahold of Manke Enterprises, one of the two Lake Wisconsin dock companies. They agreed to go take a look that night, and what they found wasn’t great.

Manke did their best to secure the lift for the night, and we went to bed wondering if everything would still be there in the morning.

Luckily, everything held fast overnight despite record high water levels for late June on Lake Wisconsin. Manke was able to get the boat and the lift out, and several weeks later (plus about $5,000 out of pocket) we were able to get the lift and the boat back in the water. Before that happened though, we also had to have the dock rescued a week after the boat lift, as the water levels rose even higher.

Thankfully, Deano Docks was able to get it reset in a couple of days and the boat lift was able to go back in.

Learning from this experience, I took several steps to prevent this from happening again. First, I learned how to read the NOAA water level charts, to predict when flood events might happen.

Second, I installed security cameras that I can access remotely, to be able to personally verify that everything is where it should be.

The cameras were pretty easy to install, and it took half a day to run cables along the stairs that go down to the dock and bury them underground from the top of the stairs to the house. By using a wired system, I don’t have to worry about WiFi, batteries, or any other potential points of failure.

Hopefully the rest of the summer will be as drama free as possible!