Tired of his boat being stolen and left abandoned on the other side of the lake, its owner put an anti-theft system into practice: he made a hole in it, which he plugged with a stopper when he sailed, and took the stopper home with him. And he left the boat full of water near the lake. In the Ivars pond, the cement boats were the same as the wooden ones. The explanation is quite simple: they were built with a plaster mold made from a wooden boat. Eduard Ribes, guide of the Ivars and Vila-sana pond, tells me this next to one of these boats. It is the jewel of Cal Sinén, an old farmhouse from 1910 located on the edge of the pond, which has been redone – with its exterior walls of rammed earth – and now houses an information center that explains, with texts and images, a lot of stories about the pond, from before and now. In the past, it housed hunters."Cement boats were preferred by hunters. Because they are heavier than wooden ones, when they fired the shotgun they moved less; and luckily it was so, because the waterline is high", Eduard explains to me, who spends time removing Florida turtles from the lake, "pets" that many, tired of having to take care of them, have "thrown" at him. They are invasive species, which gobble up toads, frogs, snakes... He also removes American river crabs, which eliminate European crabs (yes, European crabs – and so many other things– feel harassed by Americans).