On Aug 20, three of us (I, P & G) rode the Mail Boat Walworth (dark blue hull above) around Geneva Lake. (The city is Lake Geneva.) We took about 100 photos. Maybe I'll post them all some day. These are probably not the most impressive images to many people, but they show many things I found of personal interest. IMO, the Walworth II is not a very pretty boat. Gage Marine bought it from a company in The Dells, operated it for a few years, then added 15 feet to its LOA. The original Walworth was of wood. This one is steel, powered by two big diesel engines (which, thankfully, I could not smell.) The pier is at Lake Geneva.

It was a perfect day for our cruise. A bit of rain kept the crowds away.

It's a big lake; 5,262 acres, 7.6 miles long, 2.1 miles wide, 21 miles of shoreline.

Three nice woodies. The one on the right can be found in Larry's "Grand and Glorious."

We passed The Sea Lark twice. At dinner the next day, Larry told us it was on a cruise purchased a few years ago for a "benefit." Larry had a calendar conflict, so a friend was his substitute captain for the day.

The "Ada E" is a steel hulled sister ship to Larry's "Normandie." It was owned by P. K. Wrigley (yes, THAT Wrigley) in 1954 when we had the "Doreen." It's still in the Wrigley family, but now berthed a few hundred yards west of P. K.'s old place we knew so well.

The 87' steel-hulled "Matriarch" is still in the Gage family -- as it was when I spent an evening aboard her along with Louis Armstrong and his All Stars (Trummy Young, Barret Deems, Velma Middleton, Barney Bigard, etc.) in 1954. That year her hull was white.

The skipper brings the Walworth close to the piers where mail is delivered. (This is what makes this trip so enjoyable -- seeing all the lake front homes "up close.")

The mail gal jumps to the pier, picks up and delivers mail, then hops back aboard. The boat does not stop.

Notice the water level on the pier posts. The high water made it quite a challenge to get back aboard because the boat is so much higher than usual above the piers.

Geneva Lake

Google Maps only recently added their highest resolution images in the southern Wisconsin area. This one shows a pier service boat on Geneva Lake removing a pier late in the season. The pier decks have been removed; only the "H" shaped supports remain. If you look carefully at other google images of the lake, you can spot pier cribs under water. The "H" shaped supports fit into voids in the rock filled cribs.

Larry's place. Arrow points to boathouse.

Another pretty good web page by Grant MacLaren
(Made on a Macintosh, of course)
This page was posted Aug. 27, 2007.