Closing time…

Regular contributor Randy Randall sent us these images from his Marston’s Marina on the Saco River. His crew has wrapped up the process of clearing the floats from the river and storing them in the parking lot of the marina where they will spend the winter. He sent this message along with the images:

Fall is always a bittersweet time for us. Puts me in a funk really. I’m much happier in the spring when we’re launching docks and welcoming old friends and customers back to the marina.

But the Maine weather is unrelenting as our dad found out 70 odd years ago. He tried a number of ways to keep his docks in the river for the winter and they all failed. He built a crib works filled with tons of rocks and the ice took it out in the spring. Today divers remark about the huge pile of stones under the fuel dock. Then he tried a “dolphin”, a tripod made with three utility poles driven into the river bottom. It didn’t last the winter. In those days the winters were harsher and colder. They used to harvest ice from the Saco River.

Eventually Dad figured out he had to haul all the docks on shore. He built a monorail using surplus industrial carts from the defunct Saco Lowell shops. They could only maneuver the docks onto the trolley at high tide, so it took many days to pull the docks up the river bank. That procedure gave way to a surplus telephone truck with a winch and boom. We used that truck for the next 30 years to launch and retrieve the docks.

Finally, we tried an all-terrain forklift and that’s what we use today to pick up the docks and store them on shore. Although last winter they were in jeopardy when the January storms flooded the entire parking lot and tried to float the docks out to sea.

Seeing them all stacked up and stored on the pavement is a sad reminder that summer is over and a really excellent marina season is in the rearview mirror. More than anything, we hate to have so many friends leave. Over the course of 6 months, we get to know most of our customers really well. We all have a lot in common and share many jokes and conversations. Winter on the river is dull in comparison.

So, we hunker down and wait for spring. We don’t experience the freezing temps that dad had to contend with, but still the wind can be sharp and a little dangerous. What keeps us hanging on is the vision of sunny days ahead, and all those customers returning for another summer here on the Saco River. Hang in there. Before we know it, the forklift will be running and we’ll be throwing docks into the river. Amen to that. Fair winds. See you in the spring.

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