Another... How the heck do you board this thing?

Which brings us back to the fact that most boats today are not designed for or by boaters. They're designed for the nouveau riche who only know 'It's so pretty', those who will probably buy a boat and trade it in for another 2 years later (as if it were a car), and never actually learn about boats. They'll sit on it at the dock and maybe take one trip a year.

Pascal,

One thing I noticed is that in FL the tidal differences are about two feet. The tidal differences in Southern California are between four to six feet which is why SoCal has the floating docks.

On Long island's north shore we have about 9'. Floating docks are getting real popular all over. People love them. You can step off the swim platforms and you don't have to account for tide when you tie up., The marina's love them because you can haul them on shore in a storm, and they're easy to wotk on or replace.

Maybe, but they're the future of the marina industry.

Docks

Would be interested to know "where a FEW HUNDRED boats" are or were tied up to floating docks in Stuart.

Docks

Your idea of a "few hundred" and my idea of a few hundred must be very different, yes around dinner key there are a lot of boats and in those marinas next to it all together may be around 850 slips with Dinner Key marina having 580 alone but it is also the largest wet slip marina in Florida. (There web site)

My definition of a few hundred would be over 300, 200 would be a couple of hundred so i would not be stating that a typical south florida marina would have a few hundred slips.

I am still interested in knowing where about in Stuart there is or was a few hundred floating docks though. Sure there were a lot of boats damaged but not large numbers due to floating dock issues.

A few good injury lawsuits against marina owners may accelerate them installing floating docks although most of the marinas that have been re-done do install them. All the Rybovich yards, LMC and Bahia Mar are a few that spring to mind and are all excellent. Richenbacker has to be the worst unless you turn up with a 12 foot length of 2" x 12".

.....and when I am here I may as well bring up another gripe of mine, getting on and off any kind of boat at a haul out slip.

Pascal,

Here is a picture of Oceanside Harbor. I am fairly familiar with this marina as we kept our sailboat there. The pilings appear to be about 10 feet or so to allow for the tidal differences as well as any storm surge.

Docks

Pascal, I do not want to sound argumentative but the majority of docks in Fort Pierce are of the fixed type with the floating type you saw were basically floats tied up alongside the fixed type and some piling's.

Most of the boats were damaged at fixed docks and then they cleared the marinas out and you probably saw the big pile of boats that were put on the waste ground just north of the port. They were not washed up or blown there but lifted out if the marinas by cranes onto barges and then lifted onto that piece of land. They sat there for many months.

If I remember correctly there was a 60 or 70 hatteras and one big old custom boat that was well past it's sell by date and the rest were sail boats, small express's and old trawlers. Most of the bigger and better boats came thru the storm, damaged but nothing like say Dinner Key after hurricane Andrew.

If you look at the design of the floating docks in those Marina's that I mentioned previously they all come with very high piling's that the floating docks float up and down on which is obviously good for the tides we get but more importantly are designed to handle storm surges.

No, the City of Ft. Pierce marina was all floating docks before that hurricane. The docks all floated away, the marina was near full and many yachts sunk there. There was a 58'ish foot cheoy lee that they never did even find.

Docks

Considering that there are less than 100 slips at those city docks that still in my mind does not come up to "a few hundred".

Docks

Now my definition of massive is.......


Pascal I did say I did not to be argumentative but I have been in a few marinas in my time and know for certain that the numbers you were quoting especially for Stuart were in-accurate so why should I sit back and read that information when you got the wrong city and wrong numbers which seemed to be the basis of your argument against floating docks.

I will apologize now so we can move on

As a frame of reference, some 65,000 boats were either destroyed or damaged from Hurricane Sandy. It didn't matter what type of docks were used since the storm was so massive.

How did we get from boat boarding to arguing about how many boats were damaged at what kind of docks in 2005? For the record I came through Ft. Pierce not long after the hurricane. Remember it well because I got bad fuel. All docks (and fuel tanks) in the area were submerged, and most docks were destroyed, both fixed and floating.
Hurricanes are indescriminate destroyers. The benefits of a type of dock are considered under more normal circumstances. The benefits of floating docks are:
1) They're not destroyed by ice. (fixed docks get raised)
2) They're easy to replace or install, generally without having to hire a dock builder.
3) They keep the utilities protected, and easy to work on, in a channel within the dock.
4) They're fairly maintenance free.
5) They're easy to tie up to as tide needn't be considered.
6) They're easy to move or reconfigure.
7) They're easy to walk on in heels.
8) They're easy to board from with most boats. Larger boats may need stairs, but larger boats are more likely to carry boarding systems with them.

Their biggest down side is that they're more expensive per square foot, but they almost always end up paying for themselves.

No about those boat boarding arrangements.

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--x2-- as well.