A cruise up and down Seneca Lake for Father's Day 2011

VALOIS, New York, USA - Father's Day dawned, well, a little chilly here in upstate New York, but by 2 p.m. it was definitely time to hit the water.

Brad Phillips toured by the Valois Point Yacht Club in his ski boat to give me the final push to put down my rake and other implements of destruction. (The warm, wet weather has turned the Valois property into an close approximation of a far-north rainforest. Thus even on Father's Day there was yard work to be done.)

One detail of fun work that didn't get done was launching the Red Rocket, now sitting on a trailer at the Fitch house. Maybe this week. Maybe.

Brad, sans Arnold the Wonder Dog, but with crew members

One chore was lifted - a gift for Father's Day - when Adm. Fox and Dustin took over the duties of lawn mowing the property. It was a nice present because even with them mowing, I still put in a solid two hours of weed whacking and moving debris around, especially in the area of the newly built hot tub deck.

Once aboard the Spirit of Louise, we headed south, past Cousin Roger Beardslee's dock. He and son Brett were out and about in Roger's sailboat. And just a mile or so past there we watched the Hazlitt clan boarding Eric's sailboat for a father's day cruise, too.

Eric and Tina heeling

There were three generations on Eric's boat: Eric's dad Jim, Eric and Eric's son Jason, who owns/runs the Hector Wine Company with his amigo Justin Boyette.

We saw Eric testing how far over he could get his boat to heel. Looked pretty far from distance.

We also made a stop and Karen and Mike Schamel's house, where Big Mike and son Mike were doing a passable imitation of what Dustin and I had been doing at Valois: working the yard, while the lake beckoned.

Their draft beer dispenser was working, too. Quite nicely, actually.

And we stopped at Sue and Gary Wolf's, too, where their dog didn't try to eat us for lunch (it was late) for the first time in any dock stop at their lakeside home. But now that I think about it, it was the first time we didn't have a dog with us, either.

This week is expected to be a blur with writing projects, the arrival Friday of Dr. Pam and her husband Steve and the construction of a new deck on the front of our N. Glen house in Watkins.

Home Depot is slated to arrive Wednesday and drop off enough cement and boards to build an entire casa in Mexico. Here, it's just enough for deck, thanks to the building codes.