Posted on August 6, 2015
For My Family, and Many Others, a ShoreMaster is More Than Just a Boat Lift or Dock
For My Family, and Many Others, a ShoreMaster is More Than Just a Boat Lift or Dock
Written by Kurt Welch, ShoreMaster LLC PolyDock Products National Sales Manager.
It is easy to think about how much enjoyment people get from using their ShoreMaster dock or boat lift to get out on the water, or even just to lounge around the shore entertaining guests and taking in the waterfront views. That’s because owning a ShoreMaster Infinity dock or fully-welded premium boat lift is, for many waterfront property owners, the pinnacle of lakeshore living.
A simple cruise around the lake by boat or pontoon is almost always accompanied by discussions of the lake’s homes and the waterfront equipment that sits in front of them. The rounded ends on ShoreMaster’s boat lift canopies are seen as a symbol of enduring quality, and it’s easy to spot a genuine ShoreMaster canopy cover by the instantly recognizable ShoreMaster logo on the canopy ends. The curved sections on ShoreMaster’s Infinity series of docks, along with the 8 decking options invite bare foot enjoyment, and the Quick Connect brackets for dock accessories leave ShoreMaster docks looking just like the day they were manufactured, with no drill holes from mounting or moving the accessories.
My family (my wife and our two young daughters) live on a small 700 acre lake just outside of Fergus Falls, Minnesota. To me, there is almost nothing better than raising your children on a lake. I suppose entertaining your grandchildren at the lake would rank right up there too. Growing up, I spent my summers at a family cabin owned by my best friend’s parents, and I always thought it would be great to just live on the lake someday with my own family. In fact, I made it a goal. When we purchased our lake home several years ago, we had a pretty strict list of requirements; large yard, great neighborhood, close to town, great fishing, and great swimming. Even then, we knew how hard it was going to be to be able to check off even half of the items on our list. We got 4.5 of our 5 requirements. Not bad, right? The shoreline just in front of our property isn’t all that great for swimming, there are some weeds, it’s pretty shallow and in some areas there is a bit of muck. However, our lake has a great sandbar so a 2 minute pontoon ride is all that’s needed to be able take a refreshing swim on a hot summer day.
“We Are Saving Up For a ShoreMaster Infinity Dock”
My family doesn’t currently own a ShoreMaster dock system because a relatively new dock was included with the purchase of our home. And while I won’t mention the brand, I will say that in the several years that we’ve owned it, we’ve had a lot of problems with it including cracked welds. We will definitely need a new dock system within the next couple of years, so now we are saving up for a ShoreMaster Infinity Dock. In fact, we’ve made it a goal. We would rather save up for the quality and flexibility of a ShoreMaster dock than buy an inferior product and waste our time and money on repairs and limited configurability. We do own a ShoreMaster boat lift and there is nothing more durable or easy to use on our property. We can’t wait to be able to say the same thing about our dock system.
Even though we live on the lake, and we enjoy swimming at the sand bar, sometimes my girls and I just like to head out to the beach for an afternoon of building sandcastles. There are plenty of places to swim in Otter Tail County, after all, we do have 1,100 of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes within the county lines, but as is the case with young children, we tend to go to the beaches closest to home. For us, the nearest beach is at Pebble Lake in Fergus Falls, MN. Sure, we go to Glendalough State Park (actually we go there a lot), but we usually combine swimming and kayaking on those excursions, and it’s usually an all-day event. We also like to hit up the beach in Maplewood State Park, but mostly during a full weekend of camping. So when it comes to a good, quick, old-fashioned afternoon at the beach, we’ll head over to Pebble Lake. This gives the kids an opportunity to play with other kids, and it gives us the chance to spend a little time at the beach digging in the sand, which is perfect because the sand bar at our lake, while awesome for wading and swimming, doesn’t really give us a true beach to enjoy.
Back in July of 2014, as a thank you to the City of Fergus Falls for letting ShoreMaster use Pebble Lake beach for a photo shoot, and also as a way to “give back” to the community and promote waterfront recreation in the lakes area, ShoreMaster donated a TS9 dock system to the city of Fergus Falls. At the start of the 2015 swimming season, the city reconfigured the dock, installed it at Pebble Lake Beach and opened it up for public use at the start of the season. To the people who swim at Pebble Lake, that ShoreMaster dock is like their own dock system, and Pebble Lake is just like their own piece of waterfront property. After watching people, including my own children, play around the ShoreMaster dock at Pebble Lake, I think I’m right, it is pretty easy to imagine how much enjoyment people get from using their ShoreMaster dock or boat lift to get out on the water. In fact, you don’t really need to imagine it at all, you simply need to get out there and experience it for yourself.
