Bonita water gets thin. We plan for it

Placement comes before board color

Bonita Springs holds two different dock problems inside one town. The Imperial River winds through it, moving water with current, rain runoff and whatever floats down after a hard one. The back-bay canals at the south end of Estero Bay are the other half: calmer water that gets thin at the bottom of the tide, on the Gulf-access run that threads the shallows. A new build has to answer the water it is actually standing in, not waterfront in general.

So the first thing we settle is not decking color. It is placement. Whether the boat still floats where you want to tie it once the bay lets go, and how much walkway it takes to get out to that spot. What the deck height has to be so the same dock works on both ends of that swing. Whether the layout leaves real room for a lift, now or the day you decide you want one. Boards are the easy part to change later. None of that is.

This is the southern end of our water, a barge run down past Estero from home base in Cape Coral, and we build off the barge. Pilings get driven from the canal or the river side, so the job never waits on driveway access. It also means we read the tide before we plan a day of work, which is the habit this stretch of coast rewards and punishes you for skipping.