Summer? Lake-goers will drink to that!

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The boat names alone pretty much capture the vibe: The Wasted Seamen is cozied up to the Double D; the Happy Ours bobs gently next to the Luna Sea.

“Hey, Jim, hand me a beer,” comes a woman’s voice, floating over the surface of Sunset Cove. Then she giggles. “It’s only 10 o’clock in the morning.”

Actually, she’s off by a couple of hours; the little hand is approaching high noon. But on this brilliant, breeze-kissed day, with the lake blessedly full and the Department of Natural Resources patrol boats somewhere Out There, beyond the mouth of the cove, forgetfulness is just a signpost on the way to oblivion.

A few boats down, Steve Preston from Suwanee shakes his head.

“That group had better watch out,” he says. “I saw a couple of DNR patrols out there already. They’ll wait till 4 or so and hang out outside the cove …”

The better to pull over boaters, that is, and run sobriety checks, measuring the drivers’ blood-alcohol levels against Georgia’s newly lowered standard of .08.

Jeremy Vanoy, skipper of the Wasted Seamen, has no intention of flirting with that limit.

“It’s not worth it,” he says. “They’ll take your boat. They’ll take your driver’s license.” Altogether, including the cost of hiring a lawyer, he says, the cost of a single BUI comes to “an automatic five grand.”

His solution: spend the night right where he is, aboard the boat. “We’re here,” he says emphatically. “We know we are drinking beer. We know we are hanging out. We’re not leaving.”

Even before Memorial Day weekend dawned Saturday, authorities had reported the first mishap of the season on Lake Lanier: a hit and run Friday night that left two occupants of a Sea-Doo boat hospitalized at Northeast Georgia Medical Center.

But if that mishap has dampened the spirits of anyone at Sunset Cove, they’re bearing their distress bravely. As the sun grows hot, beer tops pop merrily.

There’s flesh by the yard, flesh by the acre, from impressively taut to sadly gelatinous and everything in between. Nubile adolescents in bikinis sprawl next to middle-aged men, Lolita-like — if only Lolita had had an iPhone.

And over it all is a cacophony of competing hip-hop and rock beats, blasting from every quarter. Near shore, pigtailed moppets in life vests splash in the shallows while some rapper hurls F-bombs over their heads, and nobody seems to mind.

A few yards away, a guy in a safari hat trades dance moves with a young couple whose facial features proclaim their Down syndrome. It’s hard to say who’s having the better time.

By 1 p.m., Sunset Cove looks like an amphibious invasion is underway. Fishing boats, ski boats, pontoon boats, houseboats, cigarette boats and jet skis are streaming in, noses pointed toward the white sand beach like guided missiles.

Appreciative laughs and beers raised in salute greet the arrival of a pontoon boat bearing an elaborately decorated tiki bar, complete with an American flag, several coolers on the roof and a 6-foot Corona.

But the real stir comes when a sleek black and red monster screaming the word “Windship” eases up to the dock, a young woman in a black cape dancing near the stern. Its flat expanse cantilevered out of the water at an angle that suggests space flight as much as water travel, it’s apparently well known in these parts.

“It cost $1.5 million,” one man breathes to his companions.

“A million-two,” corrects Steve from Suwanee. “I asked him (the reputed owner). I asked him personally.”

Above the beach, grouped around a concrete plaza, are a soundstage, a couple of eateries and a well-stocked free-standing bar. As afternoon advances, a steady stream of well-oiled bodies threads its way from dock to land, empty-handed.

Empty-handed in observance of the cardinal rule of deportment at Sunset Cove, announced by periodic signs along the shore: “No outside food/drink on premises.”

Returning from land to dock, these same bronzed young men and women come bearing — more often than not — plastic cups of beer clutched in both fists.

Moored to the beach, Jason and Shannon Causey of Conyers are in no big hurry to go anywhere. That’s a good thing, because by 3 their boat is hemmed in by a phalanx of 11 other craft, tied together about 25 feet from shore — “like birds on a telegraph wire,” as their friend Richard Waskom observes.

And seemingly every inch of those 11 boats is simply bristling with bouncing and gyrating young flesh, well-oiled, inside and out.

“That crew scares me,” Shannon says, gesturing their way. “That has trouble written all over it.”

But Waskom just leans back and grins. “This is a great beginning to the summer.”