Boating Industry Canada August 2016 - 18

"%$%!&&# "%$%!&# &#"$&#% Queen's Cove holds an April Wine & Cheese party where customers queue up for spring launch, compounding and buffing. Here is an older boat looking very good. Top: Bayview Yacht Harbour uses shrink wrap and outdoor storage but boats scheduled for winter work can still be staged and accessed. Bottom: This is a larger boat in the Bayview Yacht Harbour shop for work in the off-season. team members that are capable and willing to cross-train as well helps to keep the work coming in and the hours available to them. They have to keep up with the new technology and that means that they need training on the new systems that are coming out. Of course, as they become more valuable, the marina has to work hard to keep those key people on staff full-time. Word gets around and top people get offers to go elsewhere. Queen's Cove set up an incentive based progam for their staff and find this is an excellent way to generate work by their team 'selling' their services. Additionally, Andy describes their staff as being a very tightknit family group who are each invested in the future success of the business. It seems reasonable to think that operating year-round fosters that team spirit. Laying people off and risking that they get winter employment elsewhere, such as doing home renovations or mechanical work in automotive, seems like an invitation to loose your best people. Perhaps the most important overall philosophy is to use the off-season to get your customers' boats into a condition where they will operate without fail, for the whole summer. 18 Boating Industry Canada AUGUST 2016 Summer is short, very valuable to your customers and it's a key point of leverage in selling winter work; let us get your boat ready for reliable summer fun. Something else came out of the conversations. It was the idea of maintaining the condition of the boat to a high level. That is not just a matter of good mechanical condition, it also means good cosmetics and hopefully, pride of ownership. Visiting Queen's Cove, we noticed that many of the boats in the marina were quite shiny and well-kept even though some were older. They have cultivated a "keep up with the Joneses" aspect and customers are expected to keep their boats in good condition. Another thing they do is to ensure that only properly insured boats are in the water. That way, if an accident occurs such as a boat that sinks, the insurance is there to immediately call and repair the boat or write it off. The last thing they want is somebody to abandon an old boat at the marina. Having faded old boats in varying states of disrepair tends to bring down the tone of the whole marina and you don't want that. Facilities - Equipment and Organization Bayview Yacht Harbour and Queen's Cove operate in different segments of boating. Bayview Yacht Harbour is on the Rideau and has a majority of cottage boats while Queen's Cove in Georgian Bay rents slips from 20' to 65'. The slip costs are competitive and tend to attract boaters from along the TrentSevern waterway who appreciate the value of covered slips. Michael Kelly started by saying that having the right equipment is critical. Bayview Yacht Harbour has high bunk trailers to easily move boats with the help of a forklift. The storage racks they have set up allow them to retrieve a boat in as little as five minutes. Bayview Yacht Harbour does not have heated indoor storage however, they have two large heated shops. The majority of the boats they store are cottage boats. Of the 500 they look after in the winter, perhaps 125 of them are larger boats up to 45 feet. In the fall, the boats are staged in terms of when they plan

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Boating Industry Canada August 2016