Reach out to where the boat still floats

A new dock here starts at the low end

On a canal, a new dock starts at a straight concrete seawall and the water behind it is the same depth on Tuesday as it was on Sunday. Estero is not that. The east side of Estero Bay is shallow and irregular, oyster bars, grass flats and mangrove edge, and the Estero River runs its own current and tide through town. The shoreline you are building from has to be read, not assumed.

So the design questions out here are different ones. How far the walkway has to reach before the water is worth tying up in at the bottom of the tide. How high the deck sits so it is not a climb at high water and not a drop at low. Where the lift well goes so the boat stays clear of a bottom that is closer than it looks. Get those three right and the dock is useful every day of the month instead of half of it.

That is why the owner starts at your shoreline instead of a drawing. He reads the depth and the bank, asks about the boat and how you use the water, and we scope the build around Lee County dock rules and walk you through the permit steps. The barge comes south along the coast, past Fort Myers Beach, and every piling and board arrives by water, on the tide window the job actually has.