| By Capt. Bruce Blomgren This magazine has regularly reported on the fact that as boats get bigger, slips need to be lengthened and widened. In this article, Capt. Blomgren expands on this theme, discussing other considerations regarding the bigger vessels. Yesterday's marinas just don't cut it in today's market-they were built for yesterday's boats. What happened? Boats changed.This is usually true for marinas built as recently as 25 or 30 years ago. In Florida's saltwater marinas built in the 1970s, the majority of larger slips were built for boats with 11- or 12 foot beams. The trouble is, the boats have gotten significantly wider and longer and draw more water as well. While today's slips obviously need to be wider and longer, the water beneath the docks must be deeper. And that's not all. The fairways-the space between the main piers-have to be about 50 percent wider, too. If the fairway had been 50 feet wide, now it needs to be about 75 feet to afford comfortable maneuvering among the slips in high wind or strong current. It is, of course, painful for the marina owner to come to terms with the fact that updating and renovating the marina will probably mean that he'll end up with fewer slips in the same amount of space. The good news is, renovation is not going to cost as much as you thought and, after biting the bullet, a reconfigured marina's future revenue stream will be stronger and more secure. |
Brandy Marine was invited to submit a proposal to convert a 100-year-old boatyard in the Jacksonville area into a modem marina. The parallel fixed piers were so close together, it was apparent they would have to be removed, because today's vessels were not going to fit into those tiny slips. The marina needed more depth, too--at least a foot. It was clear we were going to have to, design a fresh configuration. And, I rather than sinking new piles, we recommended that the owners put in a floating dock system. Marina owners have it in their mind that floating dock systems cost more than fixed piers. That may have been true at one time, but the cost per square foot has come down, so price is not that much of an issue. But even if price were an issue, floating systems have a number of other advantages over fixed pier systems. First, a floating dock system gives you all kinds of flexibility in designing the layout, and more options for reconfiguring it in the future. Second, a floating dock system allows you to keep gunwale heights the same for everyone. Boat owners love that. They step in and out of the boat with one or two steps whether the tide is high or low. |
Third, in a storm, a floating dock system is golden. A few years ago, shortly after Brandy Marine constructed a floating dock system in North Carolina, Hurricane Floyd came ashore with a tidal surge of 6.5 feet. Before the storm arrived, we disconnected the water and electricity from the dock system. As the surge came in, everything-boats and docks, floated right up with the rising water. No broken utilities, no popping cleats, and no sunken boats. The tidal surge could have been 20 feet high-that's the 100-year flood tide mark-and we still would have been okay because the floating dock system was designed to ride that high on the guide piles. (By the way, insurance companies love floating dock systems.) Still another renovation issue facing older marinas is the matter of feeding enough electrical power to the boats. More boats with more onboard appliances like televisions, hairdryers, even dishwashers, add up to a need for more power, beefier cables, larger transformers, the works. Capt. Bruce Blomgren is president and CEO of Brandy Marine, Inc., a Sarasota, Florida-based marina developer/operator with projects and properties in the U.S., Central America, Mexico, the Virgin Islands, Greece, Costa Rica and the Bahamas. He can be contacted at bblomgren@brandymarine.com |
