The boat comes home on whatever is left

Planned for your water on its worst day

The back bays at the south end of Estero Bay run shallow, and a Gulf-access boat out of Bonita threads that on the way out and comes home on whatever tide is left. That is the condition a lift here has to be built around. The cradle has to drop far enough to take the boat when the water is down, and the beams have to carry it high enough that it is genuinely out of the water when it is up. Capacity gets settled first, from the boat in the state you actually leave the dock in, and then the geometry gets worked out on your water.

That is a measurement, not an opinion, and it gets taken at the bottom of the tide rather than the pleasant top of it. Where the cradle bottoms out, how the bunks meet your hull, where the guide posts have to stand so you drive in clean instead of aiming: those get set to your mount point. On the Imperial River the guide posts earn their keep for a different reason, because current pushes the boat while you are lining up and does not care how long you have owned it.

The install itself comes from the water, and down here the tide gets a vote in the schedule as well as the setup. Barge work in shallow back bay happens in the window the water allows, which is why the owner reads your stretch of it before a date goes on the calendar instead of after. At the end your boat goes up in it while you watch, and Alex stays until you have taken it up and down yourself.