This entry is to share my experience with the Bremerton Marina. You can derive your own conclusions and decide for yourself if it’s right for you. For me it wasn’t so I have moored my boat elsewhere. The following is my story of why I decided that the Bremerton marina wasn’t right for me.
I found a boat on Craigslist and knew I would need a place to keep it. The hunt began and ended almost as fast as it started. I made a call to the marina and got a nice young lady on the other end who told me about the rate for my boat. It was about $225 a month but with a special buy one get one free deal they had going, the price would be half of that and this looked great. The monthly cost was going to be about $140 a month. A price I could live with. I made the offer on my new boat and the owner accepted. I then contacted the marina once again to complete my rental of the slip for the boat. This is where it gets interesting. The person answering wasn’t not the same person who I spoke to a few days before and they told me what I had been quoted was wrong and in fact, The new bill was going to be closer to $190 a month on the buy one get one free offer. My boat was too small to get the Buy One Get One offer and I would have to purchase a larger slip for the rate. Seemed like a waste since I needed a smaller slip. I made a case to Kathi the manager for renting me the slip at the original rate I was quoted of $140 a month and I would sign the two year lease.
She had to check with upper management and all I got was “unfortunately, we can’t make any concession for the mistake in the price quote since we are a public agency”. At that point I felt like I I had no choice but to accept the higher slip rate but I was frustrated because of my decision I had made and frustrated by the bad information that was given by a public agency. It’s clear that they are quite disorganized and will NOT accommodate when they make a mistake. Instead they hide behind the fact that they are a public agency. Not the best way to attract customers. Especially when there are s many commercial options that do a better job of working with customers. The other concern is that the lease agreement is written in such a way that you cannot cancel it…even if they raise the rates. The answer to my inquiry about this locked in lease and the free ability of the port to raise rates was that they have never raised the rates and don’t expect to with such a low occupancy. Which by the way is only 40% filled. It’s no wonder. The rates are steep, the lease is terrible and the marina has strong currents when the tide shifts. I was encouraged to come and go during slack tides as a result of such strong currents. It’s clear that this marina was built to be pretty and it definitely has the appearance of a world class marina but it’s sad that the big selling points are focused on the bathrooms and a downtown area of Bremerton that is still not a destination spot. In addition, you can only have one car parking pass. This means that any guests you choose to have aboard your boat will have to pay for parking.
The bottom line, they made a mistake, hid behind the fact that they are a public agency, refused to amend a lease agreement so that I would come spend my money renting a slip and as a result, lost at least a 3K revenue stream over the next 2 years and have one less slip filled and the taxpayers get the bill as a result. At the time of this writing, they are at about 60% empty.
It would be wise to stop pretending that they are in Seattle and trying to price the slips at the rates found in the larger city. It’s also clear that very few people want to moor there as there are many other local marinas that have lists with people waiting to rent with them instead.
Seems the answer is to privatize the marina and get the local and state government out of the Marina business because while it’s clear that the staff are trying do a good job, the bureaucrats are getting in the way.
I found a very quiet and reasonably priced spot for my boat and it’s not tied to the foolishness of poorly written lease agreements and I don’t worry about getting bent over by someone who is getting pressure from the state to turn a buck at the expense of customer service. If I decide to leave, I can just haul in my lines and sail away. No harm no foul. I like the place enough though that I am not in a hurry to leave because I love the place I have found.
Rowland Ramble - 