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WATERSKI MagazineIt's an impossible call, but here are some that are among the best.
There are the strange. A guy on Lake Rosseau in eastern Ontario built his home on his own island, drilled a cave into the natural stone and turned it into his boathouse – with an elevator to take his guests to the mansion on top of the rock. His name isn't even Ricardo Montalban.
There are the expensive. Basketball giant Shaquille O'Neal spent a fraction of his take-home pay from salary and endorsements – in other words, about $10 million – to build a lakefront home in an exclusive area on the Butler Chain of Lakes in Orlando, Florida. It has become little more than a place to Shaq up for the summer now that he plays for the Los Angeles Lakers.
There are the sprawling, like Mike Brown's home (nicknamed the shopping mall) on Sky Lake in Chico, California, that creates shade for half of Butte County; and the idyllic, such as Lex Kenerly's creation in Jesup, Georgia, with lake water that's dyed so meticulously that it looks like Blue Moon ice cream.
Any of these could be considered the ultimate water-ski home. So could hundreds of others in the U.S. and Canada. But in our travels through the water-skiing fraternity and through the grapevine, we think it would be hard to top the signature home in the ski community of Crystal Point, just off-center of Phoenix. It isn't the biggest or priciest lakefront home in the Cactus State, let alone the U.S. But it is a virtual palace for water skiers.
It's the details we put into the home before it was built, says Lance Renfrow, the man who concocted the home and now calls it his own. It took over 30 years of planning.
Looking over the painstaking details, you can see why it took a big chunk of the man's life to simply think of them and make sketches on notebook paper.
The key word for that home is comfort, says David Phillips, who brings the Arizona State University team to train at Crystal Point. It's the nicest home on a lake facility that's unlike any other, as far as metro areas, in the country.
Skiers are catered to so completely – just on the dock there's an entertainment center, air conditioning, a custom lift and custom ski storage – that soon they'll be expecting someone to feed them grapes between sets.
The architect Jerry Atwood is a skier too, so there are intricacies that make it ideal for skiers, says Renfrow from his office overlooking the man-made lake. Then, after asking himself aloud if he wants to ski on this afternoon – and turning himself down – he asks another question. Would I do anything different? Without hesitation he says, No. This is exactly where I've wanted to be for 30 years.
