Marinas That Won"t Reserve Space

[Brian Degulis]

We wanted to spend the weekend at the Clearwater Municipal Marina it's close to my own and a really nice place to spend a few days. They have a long standing policy of not acepting reservations and they won't hold the slip while your on your way either. So even though there is are two slips available I can't run 60 miles in the hopes that they will still be available when I arrive.

What are these people thinking how is anyone suposed to use that facility WAKE UP CLEARWATER START ACEPTING NON REFUNDABLE CREDIT CARD RESERVATIONS LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.

Brian

 

[Pascal]

municipal marina... government employees... you're expecting service?

accepting reservations would mean establishing a committee to review procedures then turning this over to the legal departement for review, getting it approved and implementing it....

 

[captddis]

It must be something with city owned marinas, St Pete municipal won't take reservations either. I used to call Naples Municipal and they were always "full", however there were always open space. Is CYC full?

 

[Brian Degulis]

It's been my experience that st Pete and Clearwater are the only municiples on FL west coast that don't take reservations. st Pete will hold the space if your on your way Clearwater won't. You would think they they would do a lot more bussiness if you could plan a trip to the facility. If you look on the cruising blogs Clearwater is often not considered for that reason

Brian

 

[Bob Bradley]

It's been my experience that st Pete and Clearwater are the only municiples on FL west coast that don't take reservations. st Pete will hold the space if your on your way Clearwater won't. You would think they they would do a lot more bussiness if you could plan a trip to the facility. If you look on the cruising blogs Clearwater is often not considered for that reason

Brian

Municipal mentality: More business = more work for municipal employees. Let's see, now... more work, same pay. Now why would I want to do this?

 

[Brian Degulis]

Municipal mentality: More business = more work for municipal employees. Let's see, now... more work, same pay. Now why would I want to do this?

I hear you but in fairness it's a very nice place and the staff is first class. I'm thinking it's more like some stupid decision made by one on the higher ups.

Brian

 

[Trojan]

If its anything like a marina that I go to. They take no reservations. It's money talks. You go there and if a dock is open by chance, you can dock for the weekend. When you leave you give the dock master a big tip $100. bucks or more. The next time you want to go. You call and tell the dock master who you are and you would like a dock. OK he says. When are you coming and I will have you a dock. Quote: we take no reservations, I'm doing you a favor. Torques my noodle. You show up at 8:am Thursday and the docks are empty. You want a dock for 3 days. I can only let you have a dock for one night I have boats coming for the weekend. Quote we don't take reservations. I don't have a problem getting a dock, But I have been going there for 30 years and know the owner. But that is not right for the dock master to operate that way. The owner does not know that his new dock master is doing this. Money talks. As long as the docks are full the D/master has full reign.

BILL

 

[Pascal]

sounds like a bribe, not a tip....

 

[Boss Lady]

sounds like the guy used to be a Maitre'D at a resturaunt. Difference is you payed the bribe because you "don't" have a reservation. Wait, does this guy have one of those Italian names, like BoBo or Quido? Robbery without a gun. LOL

 

[(Nobody You Know)]

I realize that waterfront towns want to encourage boaters to tie up for a few days and spend a few bucks at the local establishments. But how would you like it if you were a small business owner and a government entity set up a competing business close by? It's like you invest all your life's savings in a restaurant and the government opens a competing establishment across the street. Sucks.

This thread reminds me of the Wilmington, NC downtown docks. Put there to encourage boaters to visit Wilmington, but they slam the door shut on all boaters in the event of a pending storm. They are afraid their precious docks might get scratched up (though I know of no incident where there ever was any damage).

"I loves the guvment, no matter how much I hates it". Lil Abner

 

[Trojan]

We have brand new docks on one side the river and old docks on the other in Toledo O and no place to go when you get there, unless you call a cab. Toledo O promotes zero for the boating group. Nothing. Except the forth of July. City council is boater dead. They will be worse off this summer with the cutbacks. The waterfront restaurants 6 of them, are charging you to dock and there prices to eat are way over priced. The off shore restaurants are sitting on a gold mine and are to stupid to do anything about it. I mentioned taxi service from the docks to a restaurant and the owner though it was a good idea and that was as far as it went. Any port in Michigan and Canada has this service. What is wrong?

BILL

 

[Genesis]

Clearwater won't take reservations BUT the times I've been there I've really liked the facilities.

The other side of that is that they will not kick you out when your time expires. This works to your advantage once there if the weather doesn't cooperate and you get socked in. They're a popular jumping point for the transit to Appalachicola and we got socked in there for a week once - it was a nice place to wait it out.....

 

[Brian Degulis]

Hi Karl Yeah it's a really nice place but it's very hard to use cause you can't plan a trip and know you will have a spot. In the summer there are usually lots of open slips you would think if they would start taking reservations they would fill them up.

Brian

 

[Boatsb]

Welcome to the new world. No service is safe from being cut back. Reservations would require some thought and planning. Outback restaurants and many of the Darden ones too will not take reservations because it is too much for their people to handle. My response was to hire smarter and better trained people but they said the budget would not allow it.

Welcome to the WalMart era. Nothing is safe from cutting back as long as it goes to the bottom line. Service will be dead unless we demand it. What a great way to loose business in such a lousy economy.

 

[krush]

The pendulum always swings back and smart entrepreneurs will make money and provide service. That's the beauty of capitalism.

 

[Boatsb]

As the economy changes and the lower income families multiply the pendulum gets smaller and has less mass eventually becoming so small that there is not enough to swing it back to where it needs to be.

Look at the stats for "middle income" families and see their numbers are dwindling. Now with the higher end incomes threatened and fuel prices rising the whole economy is moving towards lower cost less service. Once the services are gone they are like an animal that has gone almost to extinction and may never be able to grow to a level that it can sustain itself without help.

 

[krush]

I believe your "lower income" rant is driven by the fact that America has had cheap/free credit for the past 15 years.

Story: My one proffessor the other week said "You guys all have too nice of cars for college students". A quick ponder and I realized he was exactly right. Now, I drive a 1992 s10 blazer that I just "upgraded" to last year ($900 at state auction, 80,000 miles, 4wd, 4.3 power window/locks), but many kids have new or newer cars. The number of BMW's and stuff is disgusting!

14 years ago both my brothers didn't have cars in college. Their friend that did drove CLUNKERS. Now almost ever college kid has a nice car along with plenty of debt (credit cards and student loans). This easy credit didn't exist 15-20 years ago.

Fake money is why we are seeing all these problems. Don't worry, the days of fake money are OVER--just check out the economy.

 

[Boatsb]

No the opposite. Too many non college educated not making money kinds of people being the lower income ones.

 

[krush]

No the opposite. Too many non college educated not making money kinds of people being the lower income ones.

I suggest you step foot into some universities sometime. Way TOO MANY people are going to college. It has just become an extension of high school. People are getting USELESS degrees such as "Property Management" in which classes consist of "kitchen labs" to teach people how to use appliances (most would call this home-ec). There is also "housing, apparel, and resource management" and then the good old "managment" major.

Due to easy credit, people pay top dollar for these usless pieces of paper. Some kids spend 150-200k on a 4 year education in "communications" (I had a friend do this) and after graduation make 25-30k a year.

The parent's reasoning? "I can't put a price on my child's education"...HAHAHA, I sure as hell can and WILL when I have kids.

 

[SKYCHENEY]

I believe your "lower income" rant is driven by the fact that America has had cheap/free credit for the past 15 years.

Story: My one proffessor the other week said "You guys all have too nice of cars for college students". A quick ponder and I realized he was exactly right. Now, I drive a 1992 s10 blazer that I just "upgraded" to last year ($900 at state auction, 80,000 miles, 4wd, 4.3 power window/locks), but many kids have new or newer cars. The number of BMW's and stuff is disgusting!

14 years ago both my brothers didn't have cars in college. Their friend that did drove CLUNKERS. Now almost ever college kid has a nice car along with plenty of debt (credit cards and student loans). This easy credit didn't exist 15-20 years ago.

Fake money is why we are seeing all these problems. Don't worry, the days of fake money are OVER--just check out the economy.

Maybe I'm out of touch with the college crowd, but 20 years ago when I was there, credit was easy to come by as well. Every credit card company considered a "future college graduate" to be a good risk. We had the same tables set up with free T-shirts, etc, just for filling out an application. And as far as cars, most of us had cars. I went to a campus that had a "no car" rule. What that meant was that everybody that wanted to have one just didn't live on campus. We lived in frat houses and apartments. The new beamers and such were evident back then too.

Don't count out this economy yet. We have weathered similar storms in the past. This is nothing like the stagflation days of the late 70s/early 80's and I doubt it will get that bad again.

Back to the subject at hand, I hate those no reservations places. We have a nice state marina system here in Michigan, but only about 1/3 of them accept reservations. I don't understand why the state doesn't expand this to include all of their marinas. They do it for all of the state parks, why not all of the marinas?