Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

We wanted to watch the fireworks for the first time from our pontoon but I knew I did not want to drive back to our dock after the fireworks. So back in May I had made a reservation at the Marina for a slip for just the 1 night. My thought was to drive the boat over while my wife drove the truck. We would go out on the boat to watch the fireworks and then head in to park the boat in the rented slip and then drive back to our place -- we would return in the morning to get the boat.

All sounds like a good plan.... I got to the Marina with the boat before my wife made it in the truck. So I decided to go in and find out which slip they were going to put us in -- so I could find it before it got dark. But to my surprise, our reservation was no longer listed on their board. Luckily I still had my receipt for when I paid for the slip rental reservation. Anyway, the guy starts looking for any available slip and he found 1, way in the back by their service barge. At first I was a bit ticked they had erased our name off the board for reservations, but I decided to go find our slip anyways. Well, it turned out, that was the best slip we could have gotten because since it was in the back of the Marina, there weren't any other slips between us and where the fireworks were going to be shot. So I ended up just backing into the slip, tying off on 4 corners and then my wife and I just layed up on the 2 front loungers and watched the best fireworks show ever. I've seen fireworks from the water when my dad used to take us, but this was a first for my wife.

And then after hearing about the horrible boat accident that happened that night to a pontoon boat, I was sure glad I wasn't out in the middle of all that chaos -- we were tucked in safely in the slip.

Got to love it when things work out.

My slip doesn't have a good view of where the fireworks get shot from so we were anchored about 1 mile (maybe only 1/2 mile) from my slip. I had to go out of the harbor and in through the other entrance to get "home".

The fireworks were awesome and the girls (4 of them) had a blast swimming up till the last moment.

After the show I looked toward the lake and it looked like a highway. I've never seen so many boats out. So I putted my way acros the harbor until I could find the end of the barrier dock (Which I had to go around as the two halves of the harbor are blocked from one another). Unfortunately I didn't mark it on my GPS so I was kind of trying to follow traffic and find it that way.

Took us about 1 hour to get back to the slip. Most of which was spent sorting ourselves through the other boats and finding the end of the barrier.

No mishaps on our lake and everyone had a good time!!

OK, now THAT sounds like a perfect idea!

Our local yacht club used to put on a major fireworks display. One of the yacht club members was the sole importer of all the Chinese fireworks, including all the big show fireworks. Needless to say, it was breathtaking.

But possible liability if there were any boating accidents made them cancel the display. The city took over the fireworks display with local sponsors picking up the costs. We have about 20,000 people downtown and on the upper Pickwick watching the fireworks.

The last year in front of the yacht club, there were 750 boats anchored and floating in the 1 1/2 wide river channel. We were out there on a 38' mahagony Chris Craft cruiser. As soon as the fireworks display was over, motors were started, and green lights turned into red lights. People were mostly running at a fast idle--and around 10 mph.