Storage?? Bahamas or Florida?

This is a very very broad question and impossible to answer without more information. What size and type of boat do you have? How often do you plan on visiting the boat? How often do you plan on cruising on the boat and what is going to be your major cruising area? Do you live aboard? Do you do the exterior maintenance yourself? Engine/hull maintenance yourself? When you mean storage, in the water, out of the water? Year round? Just the winter or summer? etc. etc.

Logistics dictate Florida. If you're flying in, I'd suggest convenient to a major airport with good connections to where you live. From Florida, easy to go down the coast or to cross to the Bahamas. Just fly in and take off. To the Bahamas, you have to figure out connecting flights and while it's very convenient for Bahamas boating, to boat in Florida or the Keys, you're flying over and then boating back across. The Bahamas only become the preferred storage if well over 50% of your boating will be in the Bahamas.

I wouldn't, as Great Harbor Cay has NO commercial airlines that fly to it, no real grocery store, and nobody to take care of the boat that I've heard of. I'd recommend South Florida. Easy to fly into, easy to provision, easy to get parts, easy to get repairs, and Bimini, Bahamas is less than 50 NM away. Being a CAT dockage at a marina is going to be a little harder to find our more expensive in most cases. Dockage behind a house would be reasonable and the beam wouldn't be much of an issue, you just can't stay aboard there.

All good points, so my contribution is to ask you to honestly define what you mean by storage. If all you want is have a place for the boat to sit between uses, and for maintenance to be deferred until you arrive, then the FtL canal would be the most logical and economical answer. However, if you want professional care and feeding done while you’re away, you will probably be better off biting the bullet and finding a marina/boatyard. The extent that you are willing to part with time or money will dictate the best solution.

Is the Bradford yard on Grand Bahama defunct after the hurricane? Would that be a possible place to store the boat on the hard?

In Fort Lauderdale and some of Miami and Palm Beach. There are a lot of houses on canals off of the Intracoastal waterway and most of these houses have docks behind them. Some private home owners rent the dock out to yacht owners on a monthly basis and it's generally the cheapest route for dockage in the Fort Lauderdale or even South Florida area and generally considerably less than most marinas.

Don't feel like joining "Dockfinders" at this point..... what's a ballpark figure for a 55' boat on a private dock these days? Don't need to be close to open water, an hour or so to get out is fine. Thanks.

Last time I did this (2006) I had a 60' slip on the New River for $250/Month. Don't think I'll ever find a deal like that again....

It depends on the dock/location etc...….probably $800 including water and electric +/-. $250 a month was incredible deal even back then. Going rate back then was $10 per foot per month.

I payed $800 a month plus electric up the New River behind a church for a 50’ boat.

Dockage was considered a donation to the church. You can stay on the boat and do any work you want on it short of spray painting it and there are no zoning issues.

They have 200’ of dock space. Not sure what’s available at the moment.

Contact me if you’re interested and I can pass you along to the person in charge.

Yes it was a heck of a deal. One of the last cement block homes built when they dug out the river. (Most of them by then had been torn down or encapsulated in Mc Mansions) Back then the husband built 3-60' slips that paid off the mortgage over the years. When I showed up he had had a stroke and was in a bedroom with round the clock nurses burning up a reverse mortgage on the 1.5M value of the home. Doris, the lady, was an absolute sweetheart and wanted no liveaboards and sail boats only as they didn't mess up her view, and she was more than happy to only have me be there October through April. She had damage to the docks with boats in there during hurricane season which resulted in lengthy insurance BS so empty in summer was fine with her. I was there for 4 winters. The house next door was owned by a dentist and the guy literally next to me in a 60' slip was paying the good doctor over a grand a month.....

We had the owner of a 130' boat offer us $3000 a month. Then when we said no he asked what it would take and we told him we just couldn't do it at any price.