Follow-up post: an example shot of lumix without correct settings, and one with better, but still not quite right settings.
Incorrect settings: 15s exposure, f8, color mode vivid. There would have been better examples if I hadn't deleted them (ones with 45s exp, and f4.0, etc...) even in the good shots, with iso 100 you can still see a fair amount of grain.
Same settings as the lake shot in OP post: iso100, 60s exposure, f5.6
Slight variance to settings, big variance in lighting: iso 100, 60s exposure, f4.0- moon is coming up over horizon. location of pic is the same as all of my night shots.
As you can see, even with the lower fstop, the camera has serious issues with the lighting. It's only when the moon is near full and right overhead that the camera is able to take images like the ones in op post or right above. The date of this particular image was almost exactly one month from the dates of the other images. In this case 07/15/2014, whereas the others were taken 06/13/2014, and 06/16/2014. Please don't get me wrong though, I do love my lumix camera for what it is, a low budget point and shoot. Great daytime images, excellent color, fairly easy on battery consumption with lithium, nice sdhc capacity support. But in the end, I ended up needing something a bit more robust for the type of images I wanted to take.
Also, thanks for the link to that drybag, clackers. I'll have to look into it. My current drybag is just a simple H2Zero pouch, which while nice and compact to fit into my kayak, isn't large enough to fit the camera (plus i question HOW waterproof it is at times). I'd really have to see the drybag on the link in question up close to figure out if it would fit in my kayak with all of my other things: flotation vest, mini backpack cooler, etc. I have a small 8ft. sit-in recreational kayak which doesn't have much space, and no proper deck to set that on/strap to. For reference, it's the Sundolphin Aruba 8 SS.