Every autumn the phone calls change. The summer bookings are done, the boat is still in the water for a few more weeks, and people start asking about next year. The questions are remarkably consistent, so here they are, with plain answers.
We lease boats for the season on Lake Waramaug, Candlewood Lake, Highland Lake and Woodridge Lake. If you are thinking about 2027, this is the conversation we will have with you.
Which lake, and which dock
Start with the water. We deliver to Lake Waramaug, Candlewood Lake, Highland Lake and Woodridge Lake, and those four are the whole list. If your house is on a different lake, we will tell you honestly rather than take a booking we cannot serve.
Then the dock. Not every dock suits every boat, and the differences are mundane: depth at the end, the height of the deck above the water, what there is to tie off to, and how much room the boat needs to sit without fouling a neighbour's line. Send us a photograph if you have one, and we will ask the rest. The lakes we serve page is the place to check whether your house is in range before you go further.
Which boat fits
Our fleet comes in three shapes. The pontoon seats up to twelve and is the easiest boat to live with if your days are about swimming, slow cruising and a cooler. The ski and wakeboat seats up to eight and is the choice when tubing and wakeboarding are the point of the week. The deck and bowrider seats up to ten and sits between the two, with a little of each.
People usually know which one they want within a minute of describing their summer. The more useful question is who will actually be aboard most weekends, because a boat that seats twelve is wasted on a household of four, and a wakeboat is the wrong answer for a dock full of grandparents. Our seasonal leasing page lists the fleet and what the lease covers.
How the season is shaped
The season runs from the start of summer to the end of it. Boats go in at the beginning and come out at the close, and the winter in between is ours to handle: haul-out, winterization and storage are all part of the lease, not an extra arrangement you make in October.
We do not publish exact opening and closing dates, because the water and the weather set them more than the calendar does. When you call, we will tell you what the season looks like for your lake and confirm the timing for your dock. What we will not do is quote a date in autumn that we might have to move in spring.
If you are planning around school terms or a rental calendar, bring those dates to the call. It is easier to fit a season around a family's summer than to rearrange one afterwards, and a season that suits the household is simpler to arrange than one adjusted in June.
What is included, and what is not
The lease covers the boat for the season, insurance, registration and title, watersports equipment, routine maintenance and service, delivery to your dock and pickup, and the haul-out, winterization and storage at the end. That is most of what owning a boat involves, handled before you ask.
Fuel is the one ongoing cost that stays with you. Everything else that would normally land on an owner's desk — the paperwork, the service, the storage, the winter — belongs to us for the season.
It is worth saying what the lease is not. It is not a boat club: one boat is reserved for one household for the season, at their dock, on their schedule. There is no fleet to book into and no time slot to compete for. If you have been comparing the two, the leasing versus owning page sets out the difference in cost and in chores.
What happens to the boat you have now
If you leased with us this season, the answer is simple. The boat comes out at the end of the season, is winterized and goes into storage, and you do not have to think about it until spring. If you want the same boat again, tell us when you call and we will confirm what is possible for your lake.
If you own a boat now, the question is a different one, and it is the question most of our autumn calls are really about. Storage, insurance, maintenance and the spring launch are the reasons people start looking at a lease in the first place. The comparison is worth running with your own numbers before you decide; our lease versus buy calculator is built for that.
How to reserve
Call us on (860) 295-4640. Have the lake, the dock address and the boat you have in mind ready, along with roughly when you want the season to start and end. We will confirm what we can, tell you what we cannot, and answer your questions before you commit.
We do not publish a booking deadline, because availability depends on the lake and the boat rather than a date on a poster. The honest version is that the conversation is easiest in autumn, when there is room to choose, and harder in spring, when the answer may simply be that a boat is already spoken for.
Bring your questions, even the ones that feel obvious. The best autumn calls are the ones where somebody asks what the boat is actually like to live with for three months.
There is no pressure in the call. Ask what the season includes, ask what fuel will realistically cost you, ask what happens if the boat needs work in July. A lease is a long relationship by boating standards, and it is better started with the questions answered.
