Sized for the boat you actually load

Wet weight is heavier on a boat in service

St. James City is a place people boat from, not a place people store a boat. The canal out front is a short run to Pine Island Sound and San Carlos Bay, which turns the boat into transportation. Rods and tackle stay aboard. The cast net stays aboard. You top the tank off on the way home instead of before the next trip. On a boat that stays in service, gear stops being something you load and becomes something that lives there.

That total is what goes up every cycle, and it is never the number an owner quotes from memory. So the capacity gets settled off the boat in its working state, gear aboard and tank topped, before anything is ordered. A boat in service is also a boat whose lift runs constantly, so the room left on top of that number is doing more work here than it would on a dock where the boat moves twice a season.

The rest of the install gets built around how quickly you want to be off the dock. If leaving turns into a five minute negotiation with the guide posts every trip, the lift has failed at the one thing it was supposed to make easier. So the well gets laid out for the way you actually leave and the way you actually come back on an ordinary afternoon, with a canal behind you narrow enough that the turn is part of the plan, and the controls sit where your hand already is when the boat comes alongside. Alex hands it over with you at the switch and the boat up in it.