Boat House Memories  by David Hollands

In our early summers as campers, canoeing was among my favorite activities. I credit Tom McCready 

(see Tom's Guide Book Below) and Eric Naseman as my early instructors and leaders of various canoeing adventures.

After my dad donated our family’s Sunfish, sailing became one of my passions. Even today among my

favorite activities remains sailing up to the rapids and finding a spot just before the bridge where I can

get the boat into a state of equilibrium matching the wind forward momentum against the current. To

anyone who wants to test their sailing skills and find a relaxing “water treadmill”, I recommend it.

One of my dad’s sailing quotes came after I had a little snafu taking out my grandson. The wind caught

us before I could get the centerboard down and we flipped in shallow water by the boathouse. I

grabbed my grandson while I was under water and held him above water trying to protect the cast on

arm. He gave me credit for saving him without assigning me the blame for putting him in jeopardy in

the first place. My Dad reminded me “No one is ever there when you make a smooth, graceful landing,

but there is invariably a crowd when you do something wrong!”

I remember being out sailing on a windy day and I saw another Sunfish up by Beaver Camp. I sailed up

that direction, following my father’s mantra that “If there are two boats on the water, they’re racing!” I

got up to his vicinity and made a few tacks and then due to some wind change and a bit of poor

anticipation we ended up colliding, the only two boats in an otherwise empty lake. He would have just

shaken his head. I remember sailing back from one of my bridge trips and when I hit the lake an older

woman/fellow family camper (her name escapes me) was waiting for me and shouted at me, “We’re

racing back!” She clearly was from my father’s school of sailing!

Dad taught me many things about leadership and management, and one lesson tied to Camp has stayed

with me through-out my career. He was on the Board of Directors, maybe he was even the President

(Every Camp Director’s nightmare is probably managing children of board members!), and I was having a

personnel policy disagreement with the Camp Director. The Board was visiting that weekend and I

thought it would be a perfect time to get my powerful father to weigh in on my behalf and get the issue

settled. As I explained the issue, he basically told me to not bother the board members with such petty

issues. They hired the Director to decide such things he said, and what was I thinking trying to drag him

into my petty conflicts. At first I was like “Ouch!” but I realized that he had a role beyond being my

parent and protector, and he knew how to balance those roles, skills honed in many corporate

boardroom battles. I’ve retained that understanding and think that in today’s environment of

“helicopter parents” shielding their kids from all adversity, there are some other skills many need to

learn. Not everyone can be as lucky as me to have had such a great teacher and role model. This is

probably one of those moments that he doesn’t even remember, but that as stuck with me after 35

years.

A quick story about the rebuilding of the boathouse in the summer of 1978.

I was on crew and my boss was Eric Antonsen. Eric was a hard working Swede, a genius grad student or

researcher at MIT whose real life ambition was to become a lumberjack. He convinced the board that

he could save the art shop from tumbling into the lake (there may have been some other engineer

involved in this, which my dad might remember. The project had us jacking up the building and tearing

out the existing supports (pictures made it look like the building was floating). Because he and I were

the only crew members that summer, he had some friends who were construction workers join us.

Pete, Bill the Pirate, some French guy (who the girls fell in love with) and Bob Stevens, who would

become Camp Director the following year. My brother Devin would also join us when his dishwashing

duties were complete.

We then built pilings to lower the building on, and built the entire foundation by constructing plywood

frames that we dug into the lake bottom. The outer frames had to be about 4 feet deep, which meant

digging underwater, holding our breath for each hard earned shovel-full and pitching it out into the lake.

Once the frames were in place, they were held together with come-along cables. The day the cement

truck arrived he drove down to where the canoes are stored today which was as close as he could get.

When asked, he provided the info that he hadn’t brought a chute, so we were stuck with the truck about

20-30 feet away from where we needed the cement Eric tried to improvise a chute with some roofing

material from the old boathouse but that was largely ineffective. We ended up carrying most of the

concrete in five-gallon buckets and dumping it into the forms to displace the water that was in them. I’m

not sure how many yards/toms we carried but it was a workout. As the concrete slowly displaced the

water inside the frames, we eventually smoothed it out and dove underwater to detach the plywood.

Then we had to build the cinderblock pylons and, having confidence that the concrete had set up

underwater, we lowered the boathouse, which had been floating over our heads the whole time onto

the pilings. I guess it worked since it’s all still there 37 years later.

It has always been my proudest contribution to the Camp and to see it restored to its old glory through

my brother’s vision, and to have my Father’s name attached to it, only deepens my pride. My grandkids

love Camp just as my kids and I do. I hope that many more generations will enjoy time there and share

in the pride that accompanies naming recognition that is such a deep part of Unirondack tradition.

Dan Hollands  Boathouse Dedication 2015     Dan's List of Boating Rules

Tom McCready - Unirondack Guide Book 1975