Marinas - the American way

Marina berthholders have come to expect nothing less than the infrastructure of a small town a mere stone’s throw from their pontoon. Sailing club, bar and restaurant, shopping village, toilet/shower block, refuelling facilities, a massive concrete launching slip, as well as the travel hoist whose annual insurance bill comes close to what receivers are probably now asking for a lightly-used Airbus, are all boating must haves.

Brighton and Eastbourne Marinas, Ocean Village and Port Solent serve as excellent examples of how The Prime Objective, namely a safe place to keep and repair boats, became totally eclipsed by the massive commercial infrastructure, which developers insist is so vital for the financial viability of every new marina scheme.

Penzance council is considering granting planning permission for a new marina complex at a disused quarry near Newlyn boasting spectacular sea views over Mounts Bay. Inevitably the developers are making all the same claims just to provide a few new berths.

Great idea
Is it such a great idea to build high density housing estates where the only view of the boats is a leafless forest of aluminium masts towering above huge, characterless and inaccessible concrete walls?

I doubt if Brighton Marina’s architects were planning upon emulating the Hoover Dam from its downstream perspective, whilst intending to keep opportunist vandals and thieves out, but more likely considering the prospects of a globally-warmed English Channel flooding their nice new shopping precinct and semi-detached houses.

I have no specific gripe against Brighton, but as far as the ability to design a sympathetic waterside complex intended to be easy on the eye for many a decade to come, I feel the city’s design gurus derived their architectural inspiration from the mixing instructions on the back of a bag of cement.

And whilst on the subject of cement and soulless eyesores, I move to America. A mighty nation, whose marriage to concrete as a construction media comes a bigamous photo-finish with their addiction to petrol.

I landed at Tampa on the tail of Tropical Storm Faye (having flown through cumulonimbus topping 38000 feet) and departing Florida a wiser man, nine days later just as the first few raindrops of hurricane Gustaf were starting to skid sideways across my aircraft porthole on takeoff. But in between all those hurricanes, The Sunshine State is permanently bathed in exactly what it says on the tin.

There’s not much you can tell a Floridian about hurricanes and tropical storms and with the onset of global warming, all but the reddest red necked American is now taking its nasty implications seriously.

Falling over
Unlike Britain, US local government is falling over backwards to attract Florida’s one million boat owners into its waters, along with their considerable spending power (Lake District National Park Authority might be well advised to take note). Sarasota, on the Mexican Gulf coast, excels in the way it treats its trailer-boaters.

Pristine, litter-free slipways allow their users free launching, car and trailer parking as well as fresh water hosedown facilities. Jet skiers, fishing boats, kayakers and very small children all rub gunwhales in apparent harmony. The only visible signs of hard handedness from authority, is the much publicised, and totally reasonable expectation, that boaters must avoid running into the seriously endangered manatees.

Many of the pleasures of boating in permanently hot weather can fade as quickly as a Key West sunset. Le Grand Soleil (sorry, Bénéteau), bleaches your topsides, turns your black plastic deck fittings white and every new day in paradise contributes further towards prematurely rotted cockpit dodgers and frayed Bimini hood.

Like the Florida sunshine, good fortune still shines upon the brave and our recreational boating chums from across the pond have honed to perfection the ingeniously efficient method of sheltering their boats from the destructive effect of hurricanes and ultraviolet light.

Boataminium or Rackominium are what the Americans are calling their version of land-based berthing and rack storage by erecting galvanised steel girder frames, which, on completion, end up looking like half-finished Wal-Mart superstores.

Fork lift trucks with extended loading arms designed to dip deep into the harbour to fish out shallow draft vessels, stern first, are an essential requirement for every Rackominium enterprise.

Operating platform
A smooth and level operating platform between rack and launch/recovery point, is equally vital to safely manoeuvre up to five tonnes of glassfibre and engine high above the operator’s head.

On health and safety grounds alone, the days of customers being permitted to wander unescorted around boatyards are numbered. I put my life into the driver’s hands, as I attempted to photograph him deftly inserting a large speedboat into its rack.

This is what US east coast property developers Olta Associates, have to say about their new Boat/Rackominium complex at Palm Bay, a couple of miles inshore from Cocoa Beach, south of Cape Canaveral.

'Boataminiums are individually owned deeded fee simple real estate rack storage (condos) for your boat. They are the easiest way to handle motor cruisers less than 41' and 24,000 pounds. They can be open air racks, covered, three-sided buildings or completely enclosed and climate controlled. Special crane systems, lifts and forklifts are used to safely haul and store or lift and launch your boat as often as you wish to use it.

'Whether it's once every couple of weeks to several times a day, these facilities provide you the same access to the water as a wet slip, but provide equal or better protection than if you had your very own boat lift.'

The concept is much the same as a condominium except that it is a home for your boat and based upon the land that the rack sits on and the structure itself.

Cheaper
The cost of keeping a boat in a Rackominium is claimed to be much cheaper than a marina berth. Boats can be kept in prisitine condition, especially where the seasonal hurricane threat is concerned.

The positive benefits of improved resale value, as well as offering positive protection from being plucked from off its mooring and dumped in the middle of the nearest shopping mall car park, are substantial

By no stretch of the imagination can these burgeoning enterprises ever be regarded as visually attractive without much sympathetic cosmetic landscaping. Ruler-straight ranks of shiny black outboard/outdrives dangling from all those gleaming white backsides, like holsteins at milking time, are the unsightly by-product of such a leap forward in efficiency, but with careful implementation, the environment can be the winner.

The need for expensive and potentially polluting antifouling is gone, as well as removing the need for countless swinging moorings up creeks and swatchways.

Some UK boatyards have been offering dry rack storage since the early seventies, but the sky’s the limit as far as the potential and flexibility of the US model is concerned.