A working dock wears in patches

The deck tells on how you boat

A dock at the south end of Pine Island earns its keep, because open water is a short run out the canal and the boat goes. That use leaves a map on the boards. The stretch by the lift well and the boarding spot has taken every wet step and every cooler that got set down hard, while the far end of the same dock still looks close to new. Owners read that as one bad patch. It is usually the first honest reading you have had of the whole structure.

Wear on top is the cheap kind, though, and it is not what decides the job. That happens underneath: the stringers, the joints they sit in, and the pilings at the waterline where marine growth and borers work out of sight. So the owner starts under the deck, free, and works up to the boards last. A stringer and piling set that still stands true means new boards go straight on top and the job stays small. Play in the joints or thinning at the waterline changes the scope, and the owner tells you which one you have before a single board comes off.

Then we plan the work around a dock that is still in service. The lift keeps its own pilings and holds its place while the boards come off around it, the gap around it gets closed up neatly when the new deck goes down, and the tear-off rides away on the barge instead of stacking up on your shoreline. The whole job runs from the canal side, which is the easy route to a south end lot anyway.