Build the dock around the way out

Drawn around the trip, not the view

Most homes on the south end sit on a canal, and that canal is short work: the Sound one way, San Carlos Bay the other, open water in more or less whatever direction you point the bow. That access is why people buy down here, and it quietly changes what a new dock is for. This is not a platform you admire from the lanai between trips. It is where the trip starts, most weeks, in most weather.

So we draw the layout around the departure rather than the view. Where you step aboard, and whether you are stepping down or stepping across. How wide the walkway runs, so a cooler, a cast net and two kids can move down it without anybody turning sideways. Where the lift well gets cut, so the boat comes in the way your canal actually lets you come in. Which end carries the cleats and the hose. None of that costs anything while the dock is still on paper. All of it costs plenty once the pilings are driven.

Then there is getting a build onto the island. The whole material list rides down the Sound as one planned barge load, and the crew works from the canal side start to finish. The run down the Sound from home base is a normal workday for us instead of an expedition, so the schedule for a south end build reads like any other job on the calendar.