We have done as much as we are allowed to do to reopen the Sailing Center following the damage from hurricane Milton. Our boats are back on rebuilt racks and trailers and we have restored order to the shop, boat shed, and lawn. Volunteers continue to show up on Wednesdays and Saturdays to further clean up and maintain the place. One thing we have not done is actually put a sailboat in the water. Right now we can use a couple of our bigger boats off trailers if we want to add to crowding at the boat ramp but launching and using our Sunfish is very difficult and any disabled sailing activities are impossible until Charlotte County can restore our facility. We remain hopeful that this will happen but the county’s disaster response web page shows the Sailing Center as “complete.”
We have come a long way since hurricane Milton washed most the boats into a corner, destroying our racks, and filled the building with stinky mud. The boats are back on rebuilt racks, the building is clean and dry, and our volunteers are doing what we can using a water cube for cleaning water and generators for power. Our safety boat and our larger boats on trailers are usable but the core of our operation is teaching sailing and providing accessible sailing for those with disabilities. To do those things, we’ll need cooperation from Charlotte County. The things we need most are restoration of power, water, and a floating dock.
This picture captures our problem. At left is the hoist that we use to launch our little Sunfish and other small boats. We can still use it with one of our generators, but then we run into the problem at the middle of the picture. The floating dock was lost in Milton but the aluminum ramp remains in the water. We have asked for permission to raise it up and use it with the Sailing Center’s plastic floating dock, shown at right, but that has not been allowed.
This plastic floating dock was donated to the Sailing Center and we appreciate it but it is a good addition to our infrastructure. The previous floating dock was built by a group of volunteers when Charlotte County hosted the 2012 Disabled Sailing World Championships. Casual visitors to the park likely did not notice the holes and metal hardware at the corners of the dock sections. Those sockets hold the special davits that we use to remove a person from a wheelchair and put him in a small sailboat. We can temporarily use our plastic dock to teach kids to sail Sunfish but there is no safe way to use it to make sailing wheelchair-accessible again. We don’t just need any floating dock, we need one that is stable and has the correct hardware. If we are not allowed to remove the aluminum ramp from the water soon, we will wind up needing a new one of those too.
This is the view down the aluminum ramp in August, 2025. The picture was taken at high tide so the oysters that have grown since Milton are not visible. Astonishingly, I’m told that people have used this to launch and get into kayaks. I’m a lifelong kayaker and have launched in a few questionable situations but this is an extremely bad idea. Oyster cuts in this water are likely to become infected quickly. Where in the world people got the idea that this is a place to launch is beyond me.
Oh. Maybe that’s where the idea came from? People who are NOT lifelong kayakers might think this is just how kayakers do it. This looks like an invitation to an attractive nuisance to me. As a taxpayer, this seems like a cartoonishly bad idea.
Raising that ramp out of the water and using it with our plastic floating dock is not an ideal solution but is a much better idea than the one we are currently executing.
