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I don't even know where to start about last season. My wife and I had boated on this lake numerous time prior to deciding to rent a slip there. Everything was wonderful. It is (was) a beautiful place. The place is called Four Winds Resort and Marina (Ironic I know). To rent a 30' covered slip with a 4' patio insert into the slip was $4,800. Plus we had to pay our own electric. Water was provided. You could keep your boat in the water year round because they would bubble the slips in the winter. We always pull ours out because we can.
Although pricey, wy wife and I figured to try it out for a year, and besides, we had a great time down there prior to last season and had a couple friends down there allready. Now, the owner of the resort and marina owns several other marina's around the country. In the fall of 2007, they decided to shut down the hotel because it needed a lot of renovaitons to modernize it and they put the whole place up for sale. A group of buyers went in to buy the place for about 25 million if I am not mistaken. When closing approached in the spring of 2008, it was discovered that there were several leins against the property from the previous owner and closing could not take place until those issues were resolved. Being between two different owners, the managment of the marina was not allowed to spend any money. The landscaping went to crap, the pool at the hotel remained closed, there was no dock security (which was our biggest issue), and they never installed our patio into our slip. Once they got the lein situation cleared up and went back to the closing table, the last issue that needed to taken care of was the lease from the Department of Natural Resources. Well, one of the owners had a bankruptcy in the past and the state wouldn't approve a new lease for them. So the resort reverted back to the old owner. A mess I know. So the marina remained in a holding pattern for the whole season. Well, between when they tried to close the first time (before the liens were discovered) and the second time (when the lease was rejected by the state), the new owners took out a huge loan to begin the rennovations on the hotel, restaurant, bar, and pool. When the closing fell through, all hell broke loose. Now the whole damn place is tied up in a legal mess in court.
So we put our boat in on Mothers day last year in May. Well, lucky for us, we were slipped next to a former stripper and a guy who owned a body shop. Sounds lovely right? WRONG!!! These people would go out on the water and get so damn drunk that he would pass out and she would have to dock the boat. She had no idea what she was doing. I saw her ram into the boat on the other side of them, bust their bimini frame into a million pieces, and crack the dock, and that was just the first time it happend. They would stay up till 3:00 am with their music so loud that I could hear it and feel it over the air conditioning unit. We would come down to our slip to find urine stains on the side of our boat and cigarette ashes on our swim platform. All of this was a product of no dock security. We kept our boat there for about 6 weeks dealing with the redneck hillbillies next to us. I finally told the lease manager that if she didn't move us, I was pulling my boat out and she could sue me for the other half of the slip rental. She ended up moving us over to the next dock over which had 50' slips and 16' widths. (you can imagine what my 248 Vista looked like in a slip that big. Pretty comical). The slip she put us in had an 8' x16' patio which gave us so much more room to spread out. The company on that dock was so much better as well. One of my commercial insurance clients had a boat that was just 2 slips down so the rest of the season ended on a high note, but just putting up with all the bull for what we were paying just wasn't worth it. People were firing gas grills on the covered dock. Boaters were having stuff constantly stolen out of their boats. It was just a horrible mess. I almost forgot that they charged $100 extra to have access to the bath house, they had 2 pumpouts for 900 boats, and gas was over $5.00 a gallon when gas on the street was only $3.50. They have a monopoly for large boat boating in central Indiana and they know it.
So this year, we signed a lease on a 35' slip in Michigan City for $2,400 and that includes electric. The boat services (maintenance, repair, and winterization) are much more reasonable because of competition. The marina is very well run as we have rented a slip there for the weekend in the past. That is why we are excited to be at a true marina this season. I hope I get a chance to boat with some of you.
_________________  "Where Da Go" 2002 248 Vista Lafayette, IN http://blueoceanlife.worldventures.biz
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