Set the lift for the low tide

Sizing is arithmetic, siting is not

Every lift install starts with the same arithmetic, and Englewood does not change it: the lift answers to your boat loaded, not to the boat on the spec sheet. What Lemon Bay adds is the question sitting right behind that one, which is the water the lift has to stand in.

Protected is not the same as still. Tide moves real range through the bay every day, so the reading that matters at your seawall is not the one you take when the water is high and everything looks generous. It is the low side: what is under the cradle when you want to drop the boat in and go. That reading is what places the lift, decides how far out the pilings go, and sets how the cradle sits.

Then there is the Intracoastal, running through the bay and carrying everything headed for Stump Pass. Wake is a load like any other load. A boat riding it against its bunks is working the lift instead of resting on it, and an approach with wind and wake pushing you sideways is how bunks get missed. On open frontage that means guide posts and a cradle set square, so you drive in clean and the boat sits where it is meant to when you walk away.