Now that Labor Day has passed, unofficially ending this year’s boating season, business owners along local lakes maintain customer traffic was active throughout the warmer months, while those patrolling the waters say 2015 has also been an overall good year.
Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency officer Anthony Chitwood emphasized there have been no fatal boat wrecks in Loudon County and only “some close calls but nothing really bad.”
“It was one of the easier years I’ve worked for boat wrecks, I guess,” Chitwood said.
TWRA Region 4 Information and Education Coordinator Matthew Cameron said there have only been two reported “boating incidents” on Fort Loudoun Lake within county limits. Nine other reports from surrounding counties on the lake included two fatalities, three involving serious injury and four involving property damage.
So far this year there have only been four boating under the influence arrests made within county limits, Chitwood said. About the same amount of BUI arrests were made in 2014.
“We look for impaired operators,” Chitwood said. “That’s one that you could make one potentially every day out here because there’s some of these boats never leave without a cooler of something in them, so and then not to mention the pain medication, prescription pills and stuff like that. There’s people that will walk around daily that are impaired in one way or another.”
Chitwood said just because boating season has ended does not mean law enforcement won’t keep a keen eye on those operating on the waters.
“The potential’s there year round, and some of your hard-core boaters, people that just actually live and love the lake, they don’t care if it’s October,” Chitwood said. “They’ll get out and like Vol Navy, we get stuff that happens in Knoxville with that. But here in Loudon County, I would say that the majority (of arrests) are end of May through the beginning of September.”
Since Labor Day has passed, Chitwood said water activities go “well down” as the season transitions into cooler weather.
“But there’s people that will leave and come straight to here in their boat to eat dinner and do have you and then leave,” Chitwood said of Fort Loudon Marina and the two restaurants nearby. “But if you go out — if you set over here at the canal or something and counted the number of boats coming through, take fishermen out of the equation and I would say after leading up to that last week, when the humidity starts to drop, they go away. ... Two weeks before Labor Day to the week after Labor Day I bet there’s 80 percent less traffic.”
Fort Loudon Marina General Manager Bret King said this year’s boating season has gone well for business, and actually might be better than the year before.
The local marina is located next to Calhoun’s in Lenoir City. A rise in customer traffic over the warmer months might be due to lower gas prices, which King said has people traveling more often.
While King could not provide the number of boat rentals, he said there is “definitely” more business during the warmer months. Fort Loudon Marina will occasionally rent a pontoon boat for a half-day or full day during the colder months, but King said that was an uncommon occurrence.
“If someone calls and wants one, we try to accommodate it but that’s pretty rare,” King said. “After November it’s pretty well shut down.”
The marina’s restaurant, which King said is leased out to a local family, closes during the winter.
Christian Barber, general manager of the Yacht Club in Tellico Village and representative of AWE Hospitality, said the Yacht Club does not see a noticeable drop in customer traffic after the boating season ends.
“I mean it’s something we’ve had people contact us or recommend that we deliver food boat side and apparently prior to my starting here was something that they tried and no one really took advantage of it,” Barber said. “I think that people that don’t live in the Village that are on the lake feel like the Yacht Club is too fancy for — that it’s a super fancy establishment, not somewhere that they can come in with shorts and a T-shirt, and so I think that kind of deters a lot of people from coming in and then with us not serving lunch, that’s kind of another piece.”
Despite the Yacht Club remaining noticeably unchanged, Barber said Tanasi Golf Course clubhouse, which is another restaurant AWE Hospitality operates, receives “a lot” of boat traffic in June, July and August, the busiest months of the year for the restaurant.
“There’s a huge difference, both because of boating and because of golf,” Barber said. “So when the golf course is booming the restaurant does really well, and then on the weekends we get a lot of boat traffic over at Tanasi, people out on the lake that’ll come in for lunch or dinner. So with us, just taking over Tanasi in January, it’s hard to really tell.”
AWE Hospitality assumed the role as restaurant operator for Tanasi and Toqua golf course clubhouse restaurants earlier this year.
“We haven’t had a full year there yet, but definitely June, July, August have been our three busiest months since taking over, where January and February, based on previous sales records we had, were still busier than last year but not nearly as busy as what we’ve experienced this summer,” Barber said.
