12. Hall of Fame Marina

Megayachts Attracted to Convenient Pumpout

Environmental change

Full-service pumpout capability at every dock attracts megayachts and live-aboard crews for extended visits to this South Florida marina.

The megayacht marina

Hall of Fame Marina is so named because it surrounds the north and south shores of the International Swimming Hall of Fame with its Olympic competition pools and museum. It was built in 1985 and bought by Westrec in 1989. It currently has four full-time employees. The marina is strictly that-a "small" waterfront facility with "only" 43 large boat slips. The south side has 24 slips for smaller boats between 35 and 70 feet in length, averaging 55 feet LOA. The north face has 19 slips for large yachts up to 135 feet, averaging 105 feet LOA.

Slips are rented by the day and month, and most customers are transients staying for a short time or a season. The peak boating season runs from October through April each year. The marina reports 85% occupancy for the season, which leaves about six slips open for unanticipated transient visitors.

Half the boats are liveaboards, with three to eight crew and owners staying overnight. On a busy weekend about 60% of the boats have people staying overnight. Other services include a laundry, ice sales, vending machines, and limited parking. Nearby is the Fort Lauderdale Beach, many restaurants, hotels, and other tourist amenities.

Hall of Fame Marina is certainly a "world-class" facility and a jewel in Westrec's chain of operations.

Management measures

Hall of Fame Marina complies with the marina management measures for sewage facility and maintenance of sewage facilities, as well as shoreline stabilization, solid waste, and public education.

Costs/benefits

Only a few marinas in the world can adequately accommodate, at the same time, dozens of cruising yachts over 100 feet LOA. Hall of Fame Marina is one of them.

For a capital cost of $16,200, Westrec installed a pumpout system capable of pumping out megayachts daily in their own slips. With below-dock sewer pipes and connectors at each slip, the marina staff routinely empties one or more 1,000-gallon holding tanks each day using a portable pump, at an annual labor and operations cost of $3,788.

That full-service (staff-run) pumpout capability has put Hall of Fame in a very competitive position to attract and keep more megayachts for longer stays. The marina grosses an estimated additional $300,000 in transient slip rental income per year-a very profitable service.

Environmental improvements

Fort Lauderdale is a destination for thousands of boats and is particularly popular for the professionally crewed large ocean-going yachts that seasonally cruise between continents. In peak season, Hall of Fame is host to up to 19 transient megayachts at a time, with 3 to 8 crew members living aboard each. These expensive vessels all have large holding tanks of up to 1,000-gallon capacity, averaging 500 to 600 gallons. Several boats have more than one holding tank (compared to the one holding tank of 20 to 30 gallons average for most boats kept in marinas elsewhere). Surprisingly, only a few pumpout stations capable of handling such volumes are available in Fort Lauderdale.

Portable pumpouts connect to a below-deck sewage collection system.

"Many Florida state bottom leases for marinas limit their transient boats to 72 hours per marina visit-a nearly impossible condition to enforce. If it was enforced, it would cripple the marina industry in this state," said Westrec's area manager, Gary Groenewold. "We negotiated a 25-year bottom lease from the state in 1989, which allows visiting boats to stay up to 6 months per trip, subject to having boat sewage holding tank pumpout available to each boat."

Previously, full pumpout service had been available for megayachts only at one fuel dock of a marina less than a half mile south on the waterway, which necessitated moving the large vessel from Hall of Fame's berths to the other marina's fueling/pumpout station and back. Although moving small boats for fuel and pumpout is relatively simple and fast, it is a time-consuming and costly exercise for a 100- to 150-foot yacht. Such a round trip for a megayacht, on average, requires a paid crew of a captain, engineer below, and two to five deckhands; consumes 50 gallons of diesel fuel ($75); and takes no less than 2 hours, depending on tides and wind, including vessel preparation for departure and cleanup on return. The total estimated cost for the move is between $300 and $400, not including the pumpout charge.

With convenience in mind, Hall of Fame's then-dockmaster and licensed megayacht captain Gary Groenewold felt the best bet would be to extend a forced main plumbed to every dock to allow each yacht to be pumped out without the need to be moved. The main was tied into the city sewer line, as were the marina restrooms and showers. A small self-priming Keco Pump-a-Head portable electric pumpout machine on four wheels, without storage tank, was purchased. An extra-long suction hose and a discharge hose quick-connects to the above-deck hydrants. The service began in July 1989.

Pumping out a megayacht takes two people-the marina employee on the dock running the pump and a boat crew member to handle the working end of the suction hose. The pump sucks the sewage out of the boat's holding tank, then pushes it down into the below-deck discharge main, where it moves under pressure into the sewer main. "You know, there really is no odor when using our pumpout!" said dockmaster Bob Koerber, who generally runs the portable pumpout on call by the yacht crews. "For the average yacht, it takes me about 45 minutes to do a pumpout. The small yachts have 300- or 500-gallon holding tanks, while the large ones can have one or two 1,000-gallon tanks needing to be emptied. The actual pumping only takes 15 to 20 minutes per tank, with about 25 to 30 minutes more to move the portable unit to the boat, connect, run the pump, and disconnect from the boat, flush the unit, and return the unit to its storage place. However, just emptying one 1,000-gallon tank can take 80 minutes, plus my time to set up and return. In our peak winter season, I do about 25 pumpouts per month, but in the slower summer months that drops to about 6, for a total of 205 megayacht pumpouts last year."

Hall of Fame Marina does not charge its slip customers extra for the staff-run (full) pumpout service, which is included in their slip rental charge. "Our captains and crews really like not having to move the boat to be emptied," Koerber added. "That convenience helps attract them to Hall of Fame and encourages longer stays at lower operational cost. Several times a week another large yacht, from the Lauderdale area, will come into a slip just for a pumpout. I charge them $5 to $10 depending on the size of the boat."

"This pumpout system has not given us any maintenance problems. I like that setup," Groenewold added.

Megayachts and Fort Lauderdale are almost synonymous in the world's perception of that city. Claiming that Fort Lauderdale is the "Yachting Capital of the World," the tourism leadership realizes the critical importance of boating and marinas to Fort Lauderdale's economy. Clean environment is also known to be essential for good tourism. Hall of Fame Marina dockmaster Koerber strongly feels that "not returning any boat sewage to the waterway means cleaner recreational waters."

Within a 2-mile radius of Hall of Fame are four other marinas, but only one other pumpout station is available to service the nearly 4,000 yachts and boats kept in or visiting the area.

"We are listed in the Waterway Guide as having a pumpout, and we get people who call to confirm that fact before booking a slip. The public," said Koerber, "respects you for not discharging overboard, and it shows our leadership [as a business] in environmental consciousness. Westrec wants all its marinas to be proactive, pro-environment, and to show our marina in a good light. We run a clean operation here."

When Westrec assumed control of the Hall of Fame Marina in 1989, it renovated and upgraded the restrooms and showers along with adding holding tank pumpouts. Good restrooms are rated, in most boat owner surveys, as the feature most wanted, after location of the marina. Inadequate or unclean restrooms are the most common complaint about poor-quality marinas nationwide.

Even though the marina does not sell fuel, it maintains oil spill cleanup gear at the head of its dock. "There have been a couple of instances, when crews were pumping fuel from one tank to another to balance the load, when the receiving tank became full and overflowed into the marina basin," the dockmaster reported. "Each time we notified the Coast Guard, deployed our oil boom, and had it all contained and largely absorbed before the officers arrived."

The marina follows Broward County's best management practices and also requires outside contractors and boat owners/crews to comply. Discharge of sewage is forbidden, and the use of oil bilge pads is encouraged. Recycling is available for oil, batteries, plastic, glass, and cans.

The Marina's published Services Directory, given to all boaters, contains two sections that spell out what is required: "Subcontractor's policies and procedures" and "Environmental Policies." The message is clear: "We operate a clean, efficient facility. We ask that you leave it the same way."

Equipment source

• Pumpout: Keco, Inc. Pump-a-Head Portable; Keco, Inc., P.O. Box 80308, San Diego, CA 92138.

Hall of Fame Marina Manager Bob Koerber.

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