A good portion of the marinas in my area now have at least a few slips with cable/4 post lifts in them.

Be ready to spend some money. I keep my 34' cabin cruiser (2018 Monterey 335SY) on a floating lift on Lake Monroe (Indiana). I love it, when I am not trailering the boat to other lakes, I am at my lake every weekend. Mine is a 24,000 lb Fiber Steel lift. Installed, it was just under $40,000. Hydro Hoist and Poly Lift are the other two that I shopped, and they were even more. The 21,000 lb Poly Lift was $54,166 and a 22,000 lb Hydro Hoist was $45,725.

Back in the early 2000's these lifts were roughly $1K per 1K lb of capacity. New prices are just insane.

I know I am late to the game in thinking about a slip for this upcoming season. But there is literally nothing available and wait lists are hundreds deep. So, lifts and slips are just a dream at this point.

Trailer sailor life continues.

Too bad it isn't like it was at my local marina years ago to where if a slip had a lift and you bought the lift you skipped over the wait list and assumed the slip lease. A recent management change at that marina got rid of that practice. Lots of pizzed off folks on some of those deals. I couldn't complain though as at the time I did buy an existing lift and bypassed the supposed "over a 100 deep" wait list.

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Our marina installed lifts on one of the docks several years ago and it has been great. They are not floating lifts like you are considering, but the idea is the same. We keep both of our "big boats" there in the summer and have no regrets. Before the lifts, we used the in and out service at another nearby marina. That service was nice, but our day was dictated by their schedule. If we wanted to be lifted out at the end of the day we had to be back by a certain time. It didn't matter if the fish were biting, if the seas kicked up and it took longer to get back from an offshore trip, if the drinks were cold somewhere and we really didn't want to leave, etc, we had to be back before they left for the day. With the lifts, we just drop it in and lift it out whenever we want. It is completely on our own schedule and at our convenience. The best part of either service though is not having to wait in line at the boat ramp every time you want to use the boat. Our area has one deep water ramp and it is always crowded in season. The bottom line is we love the convenience of the lifts. We are lucky that our marina has a fantastic staff, from the owners to the admin staff to the dock hands. They are great to work with, watch out for all of the boat there like they were their own and take great care of everybody, which really makes a difference. If you can get on a lift at a marina you will absolutely love the convenience.

Up here in Mass the boating season is literally 90 to 120 days so the salt water infrastructure revolves around removable slips and moorings that are easy to deal with at the season start and end. Even the lakes have to deal with hauling everything out before the lake freeze.

Someday maybe I will be in a place that I can have the boat in the backyard on a lift and drop and go whenever I want. Dream.....

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Nothing better than the ease of having it right in the back yard. But I think I need a larger lift for this boat. :riding: