Hurricane Aftermath: Marina Recovery Sequencing

By Gus Marchetti, Salvage master. Reviewed by Dana Whitcombe, technical reviewer.

Marine Salvage & Recovery | Dock & Pier Repair After Hurricane Ian, I stood on the fuel dock at a marina in Fort Myers Beach and saw a 45-foot Tiara Yacht sitting upside-down on the dock's pallet rack. The fuel pump was gone, but the boat wasn't leaking. We got lucky that time. You never start salvage with the boats. The first hour is about preventing the second storm. You've got batteries in flooded lockers, propane cylinders bobbing in the basin, and 10,000 gallons of diesel in a tank that might've shifted a foot off its pad. So we shut off shore power at every distribution panel, cap every fuel vent we can reach, and lay out sorbent booms along the bulkhead. It's not heroic. It's plumbing.

First Hour: Kill the Power and Contain the Fuel

The keys are the breakers and the fuel vents. Any marina that's been through a storm has a checklist, but the checklist starts with the utility company. If you can't isolate the shore power, call the utility and get them to padlock the transformer. Do not let anyone wade into the basin until you've tested for current with a contactless meter. A marina after a hurricane is a waterfall of electricity and saltwater. Fuel is the second killer. Most leaks aren't from the big tanks; they're from the 50-gallon plastic drums and the lawnmower cans that were stored dockside. We once spent a whole morning chasing a rainbow sheen that was just a spilled quart of 2-cycle oil. But that same sheen can trigger a call to the EPA, and then you're in a holding pattern until a hazmat team shows up. Set up booms at every basin entrance, keep a skimmer on call, and put plastic under any leaking tank until you can pump it out.

Don't Touch the Boats Until You've Mapped the Chaos

Before you move a single hull, document everything. We fly the marina with a DJI Matrice 300 and a 4K camera, and we use GPS to tag every half-submerged wreck and every piece of twisted metal. The insurance carriers want a visual survey before we so much as cut a line. So we shoot the whole place from bow to stern, then we mark the hazards on a chart: a mast that's visible only at low tide, a mooring chain that's snapped, a dinghy wrapped around a piling. Once you have the map, you prioritize. The first vessels are the ones still sporting a sheen or a cracked fuel tank. The second are the ones blocking a navigable channel. Then you get to the boat that's sitting on the roof of the dry shed. I once had a diver check a 38-foot Hatteras that had rolled, and inside the flybridge we found a refrigerator, still shut. It had a six-pack of Kalik and a jar of pickles. The pickles came home with me; they had a better future in the shop fridge. You can't rush the sorting—it's all about the sequence.

The Lifting Order: Which Boats Come Out First

For us, it's not about dollar value. A $3 million sportfish can sit on its side for a week if it's not leaking and not in the way. But a 35-year-old Catalina with a cracked diesel tank comes out today, because that fuel will find the storm drain. After the insurance survey, we sort by hazard, not by insurance coverage. You've got a few ways to pick boats. In deep water, a diver slings the hull and a crane barge lifts it onto a flat deck. In shallow basins, we've used heavy lift bags—Maxijet or Seaflex are the brands I know—to float a sunk sailboat and tow it to the nearest haulout. If the boat is wedged under a collapsed steel truss, we cut it away with a hydraulic shear. That's a slow, dusty job, and you bill by the hour. It's not the cleanest work, but it's the only way.

Debris, Docks, and the Permitting Mess

Once the fuel is contained and the boats are stabilized, you've got a thousand cubic yards of broken dock lumber, fiberglass hull sections, deck chairs, and dock boxes. Some of it floats, some of it sinks. A skimmer can't grab the big stuff, so we use a Bobcat 331 on a barge to pull the big pieces out of the shallows and stack them on shore. Then we sort for recycling—aluminum, steel, copper wire—and send the rest to a permitted landfill. But you can't legally touch a lot of this without permits. For any work in navigable waters you need a Section 404 permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. The state usually issues a derelict vessel removal order. That takes days. So in the meantime, focus on debris on land: the mangled marina office, the twisted gangway, the collapsed canopy. Use that time to coordinate with the insurance adjuster and the dock builder. If you have a pre-arranged emergency response contract with a salvage company (and God, I wish more marinas had it), you're already ahead.

The Long Game: Rebuild Smarter

When you rebuild, don't just replace the same pilings. Look at the storm surge line. If your old dock was at three feet and the surge was nine feet, you're in trouble. Code wants higher pilings, but we also recommend epoxy-coated Douglas fir pilings and more shore tie-ups. The boats will ride the surge if they can, but they'll tear out cleats if the dock structure itself pulls apart. And plan for the future: after a big storm, every disposal firm in a hundred miles is full. We've seen marinas hold debris on site for weeks because the local landfill capped their daily rate. Cut an arrangement with a certified recycler for aluminum and fiberglass before the next hurricane. It's not glamorous, but it keeps you out of a federal citation for open dumping. A marina with a hurricane plan gets its power back in days, not weeks. That's the real lesson.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to get a marina operational again? It depends on the marina, but for a typical inland marina, you're looking at 72 hours to contain fuel and clear debris, and two to three weeks to get a temporary dock in. Full structural replacement can run three to six months, give or take. Do I need a derelict vessel removal permit before towing my boat? Yes, if you're in U.S. Navigable waters, you'll need an Army Corps Section 404 permit for any activity that affects the waterway. The state may also require an abatement order. Don't move a vessel until the paperwork is in hand, or you can face fines. What's the most common recovery mistake? Moving boats before documenting damage and containing fuel. The insurers will reject a claim if there's no baseline survey. And fuel in the water will delay every operation until the EPA and state responders are on site. Should I sign an emergency salvage contract before the storm? Absolutely. A pre-arranged salvage agreement with a marine response company gets you priority when everything is chaos. The cost depends on your marina's size and the contractor, but not having one means you're waiting at the back of the line.