A plan to take over operations of Robbie's Marina on Stock Island — roughly 25 acres of deep-water working waterfront at the end of US-1 — and rebuild it into the lower Keys' full-service haul-out, refit, and storage yard under All Points Boats.
Robbie's Marina is roughly 25 acres of working waterfront on Stock Island — deep water, haul-out yard, seawall, shops, and open ground that does not exist anywhere else in Key West. It has been operated below its potential for years. All Points Boats intends to take over operations under a long-term lease and rebuild it into the only full-service boatyard in the lower Keys.
Get operational fast on what already exists, then reinvest the cash flow into a facility no one in the Keys can compete with. Revenue starts in week two on the existing lift and yard. From there the property is taken in stages — clear the non-paying inventory and gate the property, repair the seawall and remove the sunken dry dock, build permanent shops, engineer a road and truck-offload facility for vessels arriving in the Keys by trailer, add fuel storage next to an existing island fuel chain, and step up to a heavy lift sized to the fleet that actually exists here — roughly 500 tons, not the biggest machine in the catalogue. Each stage is funded by the one before it, and none of them is required for the yard to be profitable. The full sequence is Section 11.
Geography alone is not a strategy. As institutional capital consolidates the sector, yards are tightening — banning outside contractors, refusing to let owners work on their own boats, and burying fees in the invoice. We intend to run the opposite yard: vetted, not gatekept. Everyone who works here is registered and insured — the same bar any serious yard holds — but qualifying takes minutes through a self-service portal instead of days through a manager. Bring your own contractor. Work on your own vessel. Published rates, no hidden fees, one simple bill. And it runs lean by design: access is a PIN tied to your status and your stay, not a guard on payroll. The consolidators cannot match this, because their economics depend on capturing the service revenue we are choosing to open up — and ours do not. Section 04.1.
Financial figures are planning estimates built from published rates and industry benchmarks — see Sections 07–09 for the build and every assumption behind them.
Stock Island is the working waterfront of Key West — the last industrially zoned marine land before US-1 ends. Everything west of it has been converted to tourism, residential, or resort use over the past three decades. The parcel at 7281 Shrimp Road sits on deep water with direct channel access and is one of the only sites in the lower Keys where a vessel can be hauled, blocked, stored, and worked at scale.
| Asset | Condition / note | Role in the plan |
|---|---|---|
| ~25 acres land & water | Congested, under-organized | Hardstand, storage, vendor campus, staging |
| Deep-water seawall & basin | Serviceable; sections blocked by stored/derelict vessels | Dockage revenue + lift approach |
| Travel lift & haul-out works | On site; mechanical state unverified | The cash register — first thing recommissioned |
| Work buildings / shops | Usable | Service bays, covered work, vendor bays |
| Finger piers | Need clearing & repair | Restored in-water inventory (Phase 2) |
| Sunken dry dock | Submerged in the basin — a salvage project, not a cleanup item | Removal reopens the basin and deep-water frontage |
| Road & site access | Unimproved; no controlled entry | Gated access + the future truck offload corridor |
| Adjacency: Keys Energy generating station | Seven oil-fired units next door, supplied by an existing fuel chain to Stock Island | The basis for a future fuel storage & marine fueling operation |
| The Robbie's name | Decades of recognition on the water | Operate under it — do not erase it |
The yard is congested with stored vessels — a significant share of which are not paying, or not paying enough to justify the ground they occupy. Several derelict barges and a sunken dry dock sit in the basin. The facility needs cleanup, organization, and process before it needs construction. That is precisely why the opportunity exists. The expensive, irreplaceable components — land, water depth, seawall, industrial zoning, channel access — are already in place and cannot be reproduced in Key West at any price. What is broken is operational, and operations are what a working shop does.
The marine industry builds roughly 240,000–250,000 boats a year in the United States. Slip inventory has not remotely kept pace: industry analysis puts available slips at approximately one for every three to four boats over 30 feet, and that ratio excludes transient traffic, seasonal migration, and large yachts. Dockage has become materially more expensive and harder to find across Florida, a trend accelerated by institutional buyers acquiring independent marinas and repricing them.
This is the rare supply-demand imbalance that does not self-correct. Building new marine industrial waterfront requires water depth, channel access, industrial zoning, and permits — a combination that regulators in Florida essentially stopped issuing. Existing capacity is converted away from working use, not toward it.
The service side is tighter than the storage side. Trade coverage of the superyacht refit market describes a capacity crisis, with Florida and Mediterranean yards operating at or near full capacity handling technical upgrades, compliance work, and interior refits. At least one Florida yard has acquired a neighboring facility purely to expand hauling capacity, taking its lift capability to 485 tons.
The practical result for a Key West boat owner: the yards that can take the work are hours away by water and booked. Every one of those trips is revenue leaving the lower Keys.
This is the single most important market signal in this document, and it is not our opinion — it is the largest infrastructure transaction in the sector's history.
| Transaction | Detail | What it proves |
|---|---|---|
| Blackstone Infrastructure ← Safe Harbor Marinas | $5.65 billion, closed April 30, 2025; acquired from Sun Communities; 138 locations, world's largest marina operator | Marina platforms are now institutional infrastructure, priced accordingly |
| Safe Harbor's acquisition pattern | Buying superyacht yards and service operations to vertically integrate | The scarce, valuable piece is service capability — exactly what APB brings |
| Suntex / Centerbridge | $1.2B JV acquisition fund; 26 transactions across 66 properties in 15 states; merged with Windward Marina Group March 2026 | Consolidation is active and accelerating; independents are being absorbed |
The read-through is direct. Sophisticated capital is paying record prices for marina platforms and then spending more to add the ability to haul and repair boats. We are proposing to assemble the same combination — working waterfront plus certified service capability — in the one Florida market where no competitor can follow, and to do it under a lease rather than a nine-figure acquisition.
Published industry benchmarks give us a defensible frame for what this asset should produce once it is running properly:
| Metric | Benchmark range | Where APB South lands |
|---|---|---|
| Premium coastal slip rate | $300–700 /ft/yr | Key West market comps ≈ $600–650/ft/yr |
| Premium coastal occupancy | 90–95% | Underwritten well below at 70–85% |
| Total revenue per slip | $5,000–15,000+ /yr | Target upper band + service revenue on top |
| Slip revenue gross margin | ~70% | Consistent with our opex build |
| Marina cap rate | 6–10% (6–7% premium coastal w/ waitlist) | Relevant to eventual valuation, not year-1 ops |
| EBITDA multiple | 8–14× (2026 market) | The value-creation math in Section 09 |
Resident and transient vessel density. The lower Keys carry a dense population of sportfish, charter, sail, trawler, and commercial vessels, plus year-round transient traffic funneling through Key West. Monroe County's Boating Improvement Fund — generated from recreational vessel registration fees alone — runs roughly $650,000 annually, and the county maintains over 550 aids to navigation across 22 regulatory zones. This is an intensely boated county.
Storm cycles. Every named storm produces a haul-out scramble. Yard space in the Keys sells out within hours of a forecast. A 25-acre yard with a working lift is storm infrastructure: haul-out revenue going in, a repair backlog for months coming out. Insurance carriers increasingly expect a documented haul-out plan — we intend to become that plan for the lower Keys.
Government and commercial fleets. NAS Key West and Coast Guard operations, the Stock Island commercial fishing fleet, ferries, dive operators, and pilot boats all need local service capability that currently does not exist at scale.
The luxury build-out next door. Stock Island's hospitality upgrade is accelerating — Stock Island Marina Village operates 220 slips for vessels to 300 feet, and the former Ocean's Edge reopened as the Hilton Key West Resort & Marina on July 1, 2026 with 175 rooms across 20 acres and 111 wet slips for vessels to 140 feet. These are dockage and hospitality businesses. They generate concentrated service demand within a mile of our gate and have no yard to satisfy it.
| Facility | What they are | What they are not | Our relationship |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stock Island Marina Village | Largest deep-water marina in the Keys — 220 slips, vessels to 300', floating concrete docks, fuel, pump-out | Not a boatyard. No haul-out, no refit capability | Customer source. Their vessels need a yard |
| Hilton Key West Resort & Marina | 175-room resort, 20 acres, 111 slips to 140' (opened July 2026) | Hospitality operation, not marine service | Customer source + proof of area investment |
| Safe Harbor network | Full-service yards with real capability, institutional backing | Hours away by water from Key West | Distance is our moat. Their rate cards set the ceiling |
| Marathon-area yards | Nearest working haul-out capacity up the Keys | ~50 miles away, capacity-constrained | Overflow partner and pricing comp |
| Mobile mechanics / divers | In-water service around Key West harbor | Cannot haul, block, or weld to class | Vendors on our campus, not competitors |
Geography is a moat, but geography can be bought. The durable differentiator is how we choose to operate — and we intend to run the opposite of the model the rest of the industry is converging on.
As capital consolidates the sector, yards are closing down. Published boatyard rules routinely state that "all contractors' work is strictly prohibited without prior management's approval," that owners must be pre-approved before touching their own vessel, and that any outside contractor must carry insurance "equal to twice the value of the vessel" plus $1M liability before being allowed near a boat. Industry press states it plainly: "more yards are now saying no to doing it yourself." Owners who still want to work on their own boat are told they may need to make "a few phone calls to find one" that permits it.
Layered on top is the fee structure every boat owner complains about — lay-day minimums, environmental surcharges, disposal fees, power hookups, gate charges, administrative percentages — disclosed at the bottom of an invoice rather than at the top of a conversation.
This is not an open gate. Everyone who works on this property is registered, insured, and running through our system — the same standard any serious yard holds. The difference is friction. Other yards use those requirements as a gate to keep outside labor out; we use them as a form to fill in, and then get out of the way.
| The industry standard | APB South |
|---|---|
| Outside contractors prohibited, or admitted only by management approval | Bring your own contractor — once they're registered and insured. Same bar, no gatekeeping |
| Insurance paperwork submitted by email, approved manually, days of delay | Self-service portal. Upload your certificate, get verified, get a PIN, get to work |
| Owners barred from working on their own vessel | Work on your own boat. DIY areas stay, and we advertise them |
| Service revenue captured by mandate | Earned by capability. We win the work we're genuinely best at |
| Fees discovered on the invoice | Published rate card. What you see is the price |
| Multiple bills from multiple trades | One simple invoice. Vendors submit through the portal; the customer gets one bill |
The open-but-controlled yard is only affordable if the control costs almost nothing to run. That is a deliberate design decision, not a cost cut:
The strategic point: the portal is not back-office software, it is the competitive advantage. Our position — easier to work at than any yard in Florida, while still fully insured and documented — is only deliverable if the qualifying process is automated. Which makes the vendor portal a day-one build, not a later refinement.
Why this is a strategy and not just goodwill. Three reasons it holds up commercially:
APB has operated a fabrication and refit shop in Fort Lauderdale since 1997. This is not a management company or a broker — it is a working shop with its own welders, fabricators, and project managers, and it is the reason this plan is credible.
The structure under negotiation is a long-term maritime operating lease and facility management agreement — not a real estate purchase. This is the single most capital-efficient feature of the deal.
| Term | Position |
|---|---|
| Operator | APB South as exclusive operator — dockage, haul-out, yard, service, vendors, tenants, billing, marketing |
| Ownership | Landlord retains the real estate and funds permanent infrastructure (seawalls, docks, buildings, utility mains) |
| Term | 30-year initial term with four 10-year renewal options held by APB |
| Base rent | Nominal; landlord is compensated through a negotiated share of net operating profit |
| Billing control | All revenue on the property invoiced through APB — implemented as one simple bill per vessel, not as a restriction on who may work (see 4.1); no cash jobs, no undocumented work; weekly reporting to principals |
| Cost recovery | APB self-performed labor, equipment, and improvements accrue to a recoverable capital account, recovered ahead of profit splits |
| Vendors & tenants | Local trades join an open registered vendor program — insured and documented, then free to work. Participation fee published and flat, never a buried percentage |
| Protections | Assignment rights, lender cure rights, right of first offer/refusal on sale |
Why this structure works for every party. The landlord keeps an appreciating asset and gains a professional operator with capital at risk. APB obtains long-term operating control without buying land at Key West prices. Capital partners fund a business whose heavy assets are already built and whose downside is an equipment-and-payroll number rather than a real estate basis. Every party's incentive resolves to the same line: net operating profit.
Two reference points sit behind every figure in this section, and neither is a guess. The first is the yard's own published price list — proof of what this address already collects. The second is a major Fort Lauderdale yard's 2019 sheet, which supplies the pricing structure the current list is missing. Where those two disagree, the reason is given.
The Florida Keys are not Fort Lauderdale, and that cuts both ways. Arguing rates down: a thinner superyacht trade and a smaller average vessel. Arguing them up: every consumable and contractor arrives down US‑1; Monroe County's labour market is severe enough that the county is buying workforce housing at roughly $2,995 a month for a one-bedroom and rationing 657 building permits out to 2036; and Key West has a handful of working yards against Lauderdale's dozens. Scarcity and cost of operation both point upward. The card below holds the yard's proven numbers where they are already strong and adds structure where there is none.
| Problem | Consequence | Fix in the 2026 card |
|---|---|---|
| Dockage is one flat rate for every length ($5/ft/day) | A 40-footer subsidises a 130-footer. Flat rates always overprice the bottom and underprice the top | Six length classes, holding $5 at the bottom and escalating above it |
| No daily lay-day rate under 70 feet | The largest part of the fleet can only be sold monthly storage — the cheapest product on the sheet | Lay days banded from 0 feet up |
| Storage and active work are the same product | A boat being worked on pays long-term storage rates for ground it is occupying intensively | Split: lay days while under work, storage only when idle |
| No covered product at any price | The highest rate on any comparable sheet is simply absent | Priced and held for Stage 2 (Section 11) |
Held at the yard's published rates. These are current, they are being paid at this address, and the band structure is sound — no case for changing them on day one.
| Length | Per foot | Length | Per foot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to 49' | $15 | 70' – 79' | $30 |
| 50' – 60' | $20 | 80' – 84' | $40 |
| 61' – 69' | $25 | 85' and over | $50 |
Includes blocking and stands. Beams over 15' add $3/ft. Emergency haul-out from $450 in addition to the regular charge. Half haul (inspection, running gear): $10–30/ft by the same bands, covering the first two hours, $300/hour thereafter. Payable the day of haul.
The one genuinely new structure. The yard's flat $5/ft/day is held as the floor — it is already above the Lauderdale sheet carried forward, which is useful evidence that this market bears more than that one for a berth. Above 80 feet the card escalates, because that is where scarcity is real and where a flat rate leaves the most on the table.
| Class | APB South 2026 | Multihull / beam 15'+ | Current list | Comparison yard, carried forward |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50' and under | $5.00 | $6.50 | $5.00 | $2.00 |
| 51' – 80' | $5.50 | $7.25 | $5.00 | $2.50 |
| 81' – 100' | $6.00 | $7.75 | $5.00 | $3.50 |
| 101' – 125' | $6.75 | $8.75 | $5.00 | $4.50 |
| 126' – 149' | $7.50 | $9.75 | $5.00 | $6.25 |
| 150' and up | $8.50 | $11.00 | $5.00 | $7.25 |
Per foot per day. Multihull and beam-over-15' column is +30%, following the existing wide-beam convention on haul and storage. Dockage is unaffected by the lift limit — a 150-foot vessel can lie alongside without ever being hauled, which is why these bands run higher than the haul bands.
Banded from zero, which the current list does not do at all below 70 feet. At 51–80 feet the rate lands on $4.00 — the same figure the yard already charges above 70 feet, and the same figure the comparison sheet reaches when carried forward. Two independent references agreeing on a number is the strongest evidence in this section.
| Class | APB South 2026 | Multihull | Current list | Comparison yard, carried forward |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50' and under | $2.50 | $3.75 | monthly only | $2.50 |
| 51' – 80' | $4.00 | $6.00 | $4.00 (70'+) | $4.00 |
| 81' – 100' | $5.25 | $7.75 | $4.00 | $5.25 |
| 101' – 125' | $6.50 | $9.75 | — | $6.50 |
| 126' and up | $7.75 | $11.50 | — | $7.75 |
Per foot per day, charged from haul to launch. Both the first and last day count, and a vessel not clear of the yard by noon on its departure day is charged the following day — the same hotel clock the billing system runs on. The two largest classes require the Stage 5 lift or a crane operation.
A genuine long-term product, deliberately kept cheap and deliberately separated from lay days. It buys ground utilisation in the quiet months without cannibalising the daily rate.
| Product | Rate | Terms |
|---|---|---|
| Dry storage | $35 /ft/mo | Vessel not under active work. Central or south yard, subject to space |
| Long-term dry storage | $25 /ft/mo | Six-month minimum on contract; back yard positions only |
| Multihull / beam over 15' | +10% | Follows the existing convention |
Florida prohibits marking up resold electricity, so power is not metered and not resold. It is a service charge per connection per day that bundles electricity, water, trash collection, security and wifi — the same structure the comparison yard publishes, which confirms it as standard practice rather than something invented here.
| Connection | APB South 2026 | Comparison yard, carried forward |
|---|---|---|
| 30 amp / 240 V single phase | $5.00 | $3.25 |
| 50 amp / 240 V single phase | $12.00 | $9.75 |
| 100 amp / 240 V single phase | $65.00 | $58.75 |
| 100 amp / 208 V three phase | $110.00 | $98.00 |
| 100 amp / 480 V three phase | $145.00 | $130.50 |
| No power connection taken | $0.15 – $0.40 /ft/day | $0.10 – $0.30 /ft/day |
Per connection per day. The no-power tier scales by length (0–50', 51–80', 81'+) and still applies — trash, security and wifi are consumed whether or not a cord is plugged in. Rates carry a premium over the carried-forward comparison because Keys power and haulage costs are higher.
| Service | Rate | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Pressure wash | $4 /ft | $5/ft multihull or beam over 15'; extra for heavy fouling. Attaches to nearly every haul |
| Trailer offload / load | $25 /ft | Already a published line. The first billable touch of the truck-down trade — see Section 11, Stage 3 |
| Mast up or down | $500 each way | Sail fleet |
| Forklift / lull | $100 per ½ hr | |
| Bottom paint — application | $22 /ft | In-house only. Material billed separately at retail. See the carve-out in Section 06 |
| Ladders & scaffolding | pass-through | Third-party supplied so the liability stays with the supplier |
| Environmental fee | $45 per haul | Attaches automatically. See below |
Waste is documented and charged to the vessel rather than absorbed. This is a compliance requirement before it is a revenue line: the operator is required to control what enters a used-oil container, which is why the cage is locked and monitored and why disposal is a booked transaction rather than a bin in the corner.
| Item | Rate | Item | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Used oil | $3.50 /gal | Bilge & oily water | $5.00 /gal |
| Oil filters | $6.00 each | Solvent / paint waste | $9.00 /gal |
| Batteries | $18.00 each | Antifreeze / coolant | $4.00 /gal |
| Spill response | from $850 | Environmental fee | $45 per haul |
Volume control is also a financial control: one contaminated drum can reclassify a month's waste as hazardous and push the yard into a higher generator tier under FAC 62-730.
Two products sit on every comparable sheet and on none of this property's. They are priced here so the capital case in Section 11 has a revenue number attached rather than an aspiration.
| Product | Indicative rate | Requires |
|---|---|---|
| Covered work shed | $9.25 /ft/day | Stage 2 shop build. The highest per-foot rate on any comparable card, and the answer to painting in Keys weather |
| Covered dockage | $7.75 /ft/day | Stage 2 dock build |
Both figures are the comparison yard's 2019 rates carried forward at CPI. They are order-of-magnitude, to be re-quoted against build cost before either is sold.
The card above carries the 2019 sheet forward at consumer inflation. That is the conservative assumption. A working yard in a constrained coastal market is more likely to have raised its own list annually, so the table below runs the harder case: 10% a year, compounded, for seven years — which nearly doubles the sheet (×1.95) and is roughly two and a half times the rate of inflation over the period.
| Class | 2019 sheet | At 10%/yr → 2026 | APB South card | We sit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dockage | ||||
| 50' and under | $1.50 | $2.92 | $5.00 | +71% |
| 51' – 80' | $2.00 | $3.90 | $5.50 | +41% |
| 81' – 100' | $2.75 | $5.36 | $6.00 | +12% |
| 101' – 125' | $3.50 | $6.82 | $6.75 | −1% |
| 126' – 149' | $4.75 | $9.26 | $7.50 | −19% |
| 150' and up | $5.50 | $10.72 | $8.50 | −21% |
| Lay days | ||||
| 50' and under | $2.00 | $3.90 | $2.50 | −36% |
| 51' – 80' | $3.00 | $5.85 | $4.00 | −32% |
| 81' – 100' | $4.00 | $7.79 | $5.25 | −33% |
| 101' – 125' | $5.00 | $9.74 | $6.50 | −33% |
| 126' and up | $6.00 | $11.69 | $7.75 | −34% |
The more useful test is the inverse. Rather than asking what a 10% escalation would produce, ask what annual rise our own card implies against the 2019 sheet:
| Class | Dockage — implied /yr | Lay days — implied /yr |
|---|---|---|
| 50' and under | 18.8% | 3.2% |
| 51' – 80' | 15.5% | 4.2% |
| 81' – 100' | 11.8% | 4.0% |
| 101' – 125' | 9.8% | 3.8% |
| 126' and up | 6.4 – 6.7% | 3.7% |
| Consumer inflation over the same period: 3.9% a year | ||
Dockage tells the opposite story: the implied rise runs 6–19% a year, steepest at the smallest lengths. That is not an escalation, it is a restructuring. Our small-boat dockage is anchored to this property's own proven $5/ft/day — a Key West number, already being collected at this address — and not to a Fort Lauderdale sheet at all. The comparison yard supplies the shape of the dockage card; the local market supplies the level.
Sourcing, stated plainly. The 2019 sheet is documented. The comparison yard's current published rates are not in hand — the read that our card sits close to them is the direct professional knowledge of the operator who ran that marina — APB South's lead was Marina Manager at the comparison yard and administered the rate card in question. That is primary-source, but it is recollection rather than a document, and it is load-bearing for the lay-day conclusion above. Obtaining that yard's current published card is still the cheapest diligence available on this section — not because the read is doubtful, but because a lender will want the document rather than the recollection. 10%/yr compounded over seven years = ×1.949; CPI over the same period = ×1.306. The operating system carries this test live, so the assumption can be changed rather than argued about.
The streams reinforce each other, which is the point of a full-service yard: a haul-out produces storage days, storage produces service work, service work produces vendor billings, and a clean organized yard produces dockage demand. A dockage-only marina captures one of the six.
Three further lines are unlocked by capital improvements rather than by cleanup, and they are what turn a good yard into a facility with no regional equivalent:
| Stream | Unlocked by | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 7. Marine fuel | Fuel storage & dispensing | High-volume, high-frequency revenue that also drives dockage and service traffic. The existing Stock Island fuel supply chain serving the generating station makes delivery logistics viable here in a way they are not elsewhere in the Keys |
| 8. Truck offload & launch | Road, turning area, lift interface | Vessels arrive in the Keys by truck and there is no proper facility to receive them. Becoming the offload point captures the vessel at the moment it enters the market — and every service that follows |
| 9. Heavy-vessel haul-out | ~500-ton lift capability | Opens vessels to roughly 190 ft — and, just as importantly, the short heavy commercial fleet (shrimpers, tugs, workboats) that no light-duty lift can take — at the top of the rate card, in a market where no competitor can serve them |
What follows is a bottom-up build from the published rates above, deliberately underwritten below benchmark occupancy. These are planning estimates, not forecasts, and every driver is stated so it can be challenged line by line.
| Stream | Year 1 driver (ramp) | Year 1 | Year 3 driver (stabilized) | Year 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Haul-out & launch | 350 hauls · 45' avg · $18/ft | $284,000 | 600 hauls · 48' avg · $20/ft | $576,000 |
| Dry storage | 30 vessels · 42' · $25/ft/mo | $378,000 | 55 vessels · 44' · $27/ft/mo | $784,000 |
| Dockage | 840 occupied ft · $50/ft/mo | $504,000 | 1,700 occupied ft · $52/ft/mo | $1,061,000 |
| Service & fabrication | Partial crew, ramping | $600,000 | Full certified crew | $2,200,000 |
| Wash & environmental | 350 hauls · $250 avg | $88,000 | 600 hauls · $300 avg | $180,000 |
| Vendor / tenant share | First bays occupied | $60,000 | Campus filled | $350,000 |
| Total revenue | ≈ $1.91M | ≈ $5.15M |
| Category | Year 1 | Year 3 | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Labor — yard crew, lift operator, admin | $700,000 | $1,800,000 | Largest line; scales with service revenue |
| Materials & subcontractors | $200,000 | $700,000 | Direct cost against service work |
| Insurance | $150,000 | $250,000 | Marine GL, ship repairers, workers' comp |
| Utilities, fuel & maintenance | $180,000 | $350,000 | Lift service, power, water, equipment |
| G&A, software, marketing | $120,000 | $250,000 | Systems already built |
| Environmental & compliance | $80,000 | $150,000 | Waste, washdown, permits |
| Total operating expense | ≈ $1.43M | ≈ $3.50M |
| Line | Year 1 | Year 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $1,914,000 | $5,151,000 |
| Operating expense | ($1,430,000) | ($3,500,000) |
| EBITDA (before landlord profit share) | ≈ $484,000 | ≈ $1,651,000 |
| EBITDA margin | 25% | 32% |
A 32% stabilized margin sits within the normal band for a well-run marina and yard operation and is consistent with the ~70% gross margin benchmark on slip revenue once labor-heavy service work is blended in.
At a stabilized EBITDA of roughly $1.65 million and the 2026 market range of 8–14× for marina assets, the operating business supports an enterprise value in the range of $13–23 million, created on an activation budget of under $2 million and no land purchase. Even at the conservative 3–5× multiple some practitioners apply to smaller independents, the range is $5–8 million. The asymmetry comes from a single structural fact: we are buying operations, not waterfront. The waterfront — the part that costs tens of millions and cannot be replicated in Key West — is contributed by the landlord under a 30-year lease.
This is an equipment, cleanup, and payroll number — not a construction number. Nothing in the activation budget builds permanent infrastructure, which remains the landlord's obligation under the lease.
| Use of funds | Estimate | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Travel lift recommissioning & certification | $150,000–350,000 | Range pending inspection — the single largest unknown |
| Blocking, stands, cribbing | $120,000 | Directly gates how many boats can be on the hard |
| Heavy equipment (forklift, trailer) | $180,000 | Used market; rental fallback priced |
| Yard cleanup, dumpsters, scrap removal | $150,000 | Excludes derelict salvage (legal-gated, Phase 2) |
| Wash rack & interim containment | $85,000 | Environmental compliance gate on wash revenue |
| Shop tooling & welding equipment | $140,000 | Extends APB certified capability to the yard |
| Insurance & permits (year one) | $175,000 | Marine GL, ship repairers, licenses, lift cert |
| Systems & software | $40,000 | Largely built — deployment and integration only |
| Working capital | $450,000 | Payroll and materials ahead of collections |
| Contingency (~15%) | $220,000 | |
| Total activation capital | ≈ $1.5–2.0M |
Capital is staged against milestones rather than drawn at once: mobilization and lift inspection first, equipment on a proven lift second, crew scaling against booked demand third. If the lift inspection returns a materially worse result than expected, the plan pivots to a rental/mobile haul solution while the lift is rebuilt — the revenue sequence slips, the thesis does not break.
Detailed week-by-week execution lives in the 30-Day Activation Plan. This is the command view across the first quarter.
Exit condition: lift hauling on a schedule, storage and dockage billing, shop earning, yard presentable to a paying customer.
Exit condition: revenue is recurring rather than opportunistic, and the first month's numbers can be compared against this plan.
Exit condition: two zones earning, salvage underway, and a financial model built on real numbers rather than benchmarks.
The governing principle is sequence: get operational fast on what already exists, then reinvest the cash flow into becoming a facility no one in the Keys can compete with. Nothing in the later stages is required for the yard to make money. Each stage is funded by the one before it.
This is the differentiator that does not exist anywhere else in the island chain. Vessels arrive in the Florida Keys on trucks — down a single highway, to a place with no proper facility built to receive them. Today that offload is improvised. We intend to build the facility that makes it routine.
The Keys Energy Services Stock Island Generating Facility sits next door and operates seven oil-fired units — four combustion turbine, two medium-speed diesel, one high-speed diesel. That plant is supplied by an established fuel delivery chain into Stock Island. The logistics problem that makes marine fuel hard and expensive in the Keys — getting volume fuel to the island reliably — is already solved on the adjacent parcel.
The existing lift makes the yard viable. A heavy lift makes it regionally singular. But the correct question is not "how big can we go" — it is what capacity actually converts our acreage into revenue. Those are different numbers, and getting it wrong strands seven figures of capital in a machine that serves a handful of boats.
Marine Travelift publishes two families. The BFMII series spans 25–100 metric tons and handles vessels roughly 25–100 ft. The C-series spans 150–1,500 metric tons and handles vessels roughly 130–328 ft. That 130–328 ft figure describes the entire C-series spread — the 150-ton machine at the bottom and the 1,500-ton machine at the top — not the range of any single unit.
Because displacement scales with the cube of length, the capacity-to-length curve is brutally flat in the middle of that series:
| Machine | Approx. max vessel length | Practical read |
|---|---|---|
| C-series, 150 ton | ~130 ft | Entry of the heavy class |
| C-series, ~500 ton | ~190 ft | Covers the entire realistic Key West fleet |
| C-series, 600 ton | ~205 ft | Roughly 15 more feet of vessel for materially more money |
| C-series, 1,500 ton | ~328 ft | Superyacht/commercial-shipyard class |
Lengths interpolated across Marine Travelift's published C-series envelope (150–1,500 t ≈ 130–328 ft) on a displacement-to-length basis; confirm against manufacturer sizing for any specific hull before purchase.
The step from 500 to 600 tons buys roughly fifteen feet of vessel length. It does not open a new market segment; it adds cost, weight, wheel loading, and pier requirement for a marginal gain. And the vessels that genuinely need 600+ tons — 200 ft and up — cannot be monetized on this property in any number. Run the footprint math:
| Fleet mix on the same hardstand | Vessels that fit | Revenue per haul cycle | Monthly storage |
|---|---|---|---|
| 300 ft+ class (≈0.6 acre each + lanes) | 4–6 | ≈ $82,000 | ≈ $41,000 |
| 90–120 ft class (≈0.08 acre each + lanes) | 40–55 | ≈ $225,000 | ≈ $112,500 |
Illustrative, using the published rate card ($50/ft haul, $25/ft/mo storage) against a ~10-acre usable hardstand assumption with lift lanes and access allowances. Hardstand acreage is an August 10 survey item.
The mid-size fleet produces roughly 2.7× the revenue on identical ground — and does it across forty-plus customers instead of five, which is a materially more durable book of business. A yard full of 300-footers is a prestige photograph. A yard full of 90–120 ft boats is a business.
Sequencing note. Any heavy lift requires the earlier stages first — lift pier structure, hardstand bearing capacity, the road, and the turning area all have to exist before a machine of this class is useful. That is why it is Stage 5 and not Stage 1.
| Stage | Window | Principal works | Unlocks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Control | Mo. 1–6 | Clear non-payers · gate & code box · temp offices · vendor list · unified billing | Capacity + accountability |
| 2 · Water & shops | Mo. 6–18 | Seawall repair · remove sunken dry dock · finger piers · permanent shops | Dockage + weatherproof work |
| 3 · Road & offload | Yr 2–4 | Engineered road · truck turning/staging · offload & launch interface | Trucked-vessel logistics |
| 4 · Fuel | Yr 3–6 | Fuel storage & dispensing (regulatory-gated) | Fuel revenue + traffic |
| 5 · Heavy lift | Yr 4–8 | ~500-ton travel lift (sized to the measured gap) + supporting pier & hardstand | Vessels to ~190 ft + heavy commercial |
Stage windows are sequencing targets, not commitments. Each stage is gated on the prior stage's cash flow, on permitting, and on the survey and engineering work specific to it. Capital for Stages 2–5 is expected to come from operations, project financing, and landlord infrastructure obligations under the lease — not from the activation budget in Section 09.
Most business plans stop at ten years because most businesses are not built on irreplaceable land. This one is. The half-century case rests on two facts moving in opposite directions — and a third that turns the risk into the opportunity.
No new marine industrial waterfront is being created in the Florida Keys. The combination required — water depth, channel access, industrial zoning, upland acreage, and permits — is effectively unobtainable today, and every decade converts more of the remaining stock to residential, resort, and tourism use. The direction of travel over the last thirty years has been one way. Over fifty years, the working waterfront that survives will be a small fraction of what exists now, and whoever holds it will hold something that cannot be competed with, only bought.
Any honest hundred-year plan for the Florida Keys has to start here. Projections from the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact indicate roughly 12 inches of sea level rise by 2030 and more than 30 inches by 2060. Monroe County's own vulnerability work is starker still:
| Horizon | Roadways affected | Housing units affected |
|---|---|---|
| By 2045 | 49% | — |
| By 2060 | 66% | 82% |
| By 2100 | 81% | 92% |
Under high-end 2100 scenarios, 2.7 feet of rise affects roughly 55% of the population and 5.4 feet affects roughly 83%. The preliminary estimate to elevate roads in just two pilot communities is $1.8 billion. We are not going to pretend this is someone else's problem. It is the defining physical fact of the next century in Monroe County.
Here is the asymmetry, and it is the heart of the long thesis. Sea level rise is catastrophic for housing, roads, and land-dependent commerce. For marine infrastructure it is something closer to the opposite:
Convert operating control into ownership. Elevate and armor incrementally with every capital cycle — every repaving, every seawall repair, every new slab is built to a higher target elevation than the code requires. Build the adaptation into routine maintenance rather than treating it as a future project.
As surrounding land use degrades and competitors exit, deepen the institutional position: government logistics, emergency staging, marine supply, and the service capability the lower Keys cannot function without. Consolidate adjacent working waterfront as it becomes available — and it will become available, because the operators who did not adapt will sell.
The objective at a hundred years is not a bigger boatyard. It is to be the entity that still owns operational deep-water industrial waterfront in the lower Florida Keys when almost none remains — held through a structure (family ownership, trust, or long-dated partnership) built to survive generational transfer rather than a five-year exit window.
| Risk | Reality | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|
| Derelict vessels & title | Multiple vessels and barges with unclear ownership. Removal is a legal process, not a crane job | Day-1 documentation; FWC/Monroe County derelict process; revenue runs around them meanwhile |
| Environmental / pre-existing | Old working yard; unknowns in soil and basin; a sunken vessel | Baseline assessment before commitment; landlord retains pre-existing conditions in the lease; compliant washdown from day one |
| Travel lift condition | Mechanical state unverified — the largest single cost unknown | Inspection and load test in week one; $150–350K range held; rental/mobile haul fallback priced |
| Hurricane | It is the Keys. A storm can hit the yard itself | Landlord insures fixed infrastructure, APB insures operations; storm plan is also a revenue product |
| Permits & county process | Monroe County moves slowly; submerged-land and use questions take time | Operate existing permitted uses first; sequence expansions behind counsel-led diligence |
| Execution capacity | APB is running Fort Lauderdale while standing this up | Dedicated APB South lead on site; operating systems built before day one |
| Agreement not signed | The lease is drafted, in counsel review, unexecuted | No activation capital is deployed before signature and diligence-gate satisfaction |
| Insurance market withdrawal | Monroe County carriers repricing or exiting affects vessel population | Diversify toward commercial, government, and transient work; haul-out capability is itself an insurance mitigant |
| Institutional competitor entry | Safe Harbor or Suntex could acquire a Keys position | Speed and the lease. There is no comparable site left in Key West to acquire — that is the moat |
| No marina terms exist | The operator publishes no storage agreement, lien language, abandoned-vessel provisions, customer insurance requirement, or vessel-in-custody liability position — their "terms of service" is website boilerplate. Customer agreements may be thin or handshake-based | Day-one legal work. Draft a real storage and haul-out agreement, insurance requirement, liability position, and vendor access terms with Florida marine counsel; get existing customers signed onto them during the first 30 days. Audit what agreements actually exist during diligence — this directly gates the non-payer clearance below |
| Clearing non-paying vessels | Removing long-tenured boats creates disputes, bad feeling locally, and occasional litigation — and is materially harder without signed storage agreements (see above) | Every removal runs a documented process — notice, contract, lien, or state derelict procedure. Fair warning and a paid option offered first; counsel reviews the template before the first notice goes out |
| Fuel storage regulatory load | Tank permitting, FDEP/EPA SPCC, fire code, spill containment and insurance are a serious barrier | Deliberately staged to Year 3+, behind cash flow and a compliance record; its own feasibility study gates any commitment |
| Build-out capital & sequencing | Stages 2–5 need capital well beyond the activation budget | Each stage is gated on the prior stage's cash flow, project financing, and landlord infrastructure obligations. No stage is a prerequisite for the yard being profitable |
Three things stand between this plan and a working yard.
Every claim in this document is checkable. The claims that are not yet verified say so on their face, and one claim from an earlier draft has been corrected against research rather than defended. That is how we intend to run the yard, and how we intend to report on it.
Market data in Section 03, financial benchmarks in Section 08, and climate projections in Section 12 are drawn from the following. Rate-card figures are the operating yard's own published pricing; Key West dockage comps are market observations as of July 2026.