Berth Control : Demand for Large Slips Exceeds Supply, While Many Small Spaces Sit Empty

Nick Baccari wants to sell his 36-foot sport fishing boat, but he is not eager to give up his treasured slip at the northeast end of Dana Point Harbor. The boat would be easy to replace, he said, but not the slip.

“It took me five years to get this slip,” said Baccari, 43, the owner of the Door Store and More in San Clemente, whose $600 cash deposit was held by the marina during the long wait for a space. “By the time I got my slip, the rent had increased. But it didn’t matter, I coughed it up.”

Such stories are heard frequently at marinas up and down the coast, and particularly at popular Dana Point Harbor, where the current wait can be as long as six years for boats more than 65 feet long.

Marinas find themselves with too many small slips and not enough large ones, a development that causes managers to watch helplessly as the small slips sit empty for months, providing no income, while boat owners are waiting in long lines for the slips that can handle their 35- to 45-foot boats.

“It’s happening everywhere,” said Jim Maneus, manager of the 1,500-boat Dana Point Marina Co., one of two marinas in Dana Point Harbor. “The small-boat market has changed. A lot of people who would have bought a small ski boat in the past are now buying the small personal watercraft, like Jet Skis, which now can tow skiers behind them.”

The Dana Point Marina Co. is renegotiating a long-term lease with the county, which includes a $10-million redesign of the slips, Maneus said.

Robert G. Fisher, the director of the county’s Department of Harbors, Beaches and Parks, said marinas today “have been experiencing substantially greater vacancies than they have in anyone’s memory” in the smaller slip sizes, the under-30-foot category.

At the Dana Point Marina Co., for instance, Maneus said 86 of the more than 800 25-foot slips were vacant in October, representing about $17,000 a month in lost income.

“Marina managers that do have the smaller size slips in great numbers are recognizing that they are not capturing the market for wet slips, that they had probably better reconfigure their marinas to reflect the new realities,” said Fisher, who is also executive vice president of the California Marine Park and Harbors Assn.

“We are observing it and paying attention to it as a trend up and down the East Coast but particularly in Southern California,” said Fisher, who oversees the other county marinas leased to operators in Newport Dunes and Sunset Beach.

The same holds true in Long Beach Harbor, said Mark Sandoval, the manager of marinas and beaches for the city. Long Beach has the largest city-run marina operation in the country with two marinas, the popular 2,000-slip Alamitos Bay Marina on the east side of town and the 1,800-slip Downtown Marina on the west side.

The city uses the Downtown Marina, which is 40% vacant, as a feeder for Alamitos Bay, Sandoval said. People who want a slip in Alamitos Bay have to first lease one downtown during the waiting period, Sandoval said.

He attributes the high vacancy rate of small-boat slips not so much to the personal watercraft industry as the economy.

“When everybody was fat and happy in the 1980s and had a lot of money to throw around, they had a slip,” Sandoval said. “When the economy changed and luxuries became fewer and fewer, if they had a boat they could keep on a trailer, they went that route.”

A boat on a trailer can be stored in a driveway for free, or in dry storage, which costs about a third of typical slip costs, Sandoval said. He estimated dry storage in the Long Beach area at about $3 a foot, compared with about $8 a foot for a slip.

But there is no doubt the personal watercraft industry is “changing the entry level of boaters,” Sandoval said.

“Ten or 15 years ago, if these people wanted to get into boating, they had to buy a boat. Now they can use the personal watercraft as entry level and sometimes they never change from that,” Sandoval said.

At the 450-slip Newport Dunes Resort Marina in Newport Beach’s Back Bay, the vacancies in small slips are considered “seasonal,” said Tim Quinn, the general manager. In the summer, the marina tends to be full, but boaters put their smaller craft on trailers to save money on slip rentals, Quinn said.

“We definitely have a greater demand for the larger slips, but we are completely full in the summer,” Quinn said.

The Newport Dunes marina, which also includes a park for recreational vehicles, was completely rebuilt in 1991 at a cost of $15 million, Quinn said.

The situation is exacerbated in Dana Point Harbor because there are so many small slips in the two marinas. The harbor, which opened in 1972, was designed to accommodate small-boat owners, leaving the Dana Point Marina Co. with 56% of its slips designed for boats 30 feet and under, Maneus said.

“It’s like any kind of retail property, what the market was 15 years ago is entirely different now,” Maneus said.

Small-boat manufacturers have seen their demand decline in the past eight years, while the personal watercraft industry has skyrocketed 40% during the same time, he said.

Maneus wants to reconfigure the slips so 51% of them would serve the boats in the 35-foot to 45-foot range, he said. Not only would the boat owners on the waiting list be accommodated, but the marina owners could reap greater income.

He lists his current price for 35-foot slips at $390 a month, going up to $504 a month for 45-foot slips. Slips from 20 to 30 feet range from $246 a month to $322 monthly, he said.