Dock, Ramp & Float Maintenance Above the Water

Start with the line, because on this one it is the most useful thing on the page. What I do on a dock is carpentry and hardware above the water: deck boards, railings, ladders, cleats, chocks, hinge and fastener replacement, non-slip surfaces, and a written seasonal inspection. What I do not do is anything in the water or below the high water line. No pilings. No flotation, no float tubs, no anchoring or chain and cable work. No ramp or gangway relocation, no bulkheads, no beach or bank work, no barge-based work. That is marine contracting, it is permitted work, and it belongs to people who do it for a living.

Now the permits, and I am going to be blunt rather than reassuring, because getting this wrong is expensive for the owner and not for the contractor. Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife lists docks, piers, ramps, floats, boathouses, and buoys as project types needing a Hydraulic Project Approval for new work, repair, modification, and replacement, and WDFW states in the same place that the requirement can reach projects above the ordinary high water line. San Juan County is equally direct in its own guidance: building a new dock usually requires a shoreline permit, reconfiguring one may require a permit or a revision to an existing one, and repairing an existing dock usually requires approval of an exemption from a shoreline permit — which is a written county approval, not a shrug. Shoreline rules apply to the landward two hundred feet of the ordinary high water mark as well as the aquatic area itself.

So the working rule at my end is simple. Before I do anything on a dock, ramp, or float, I want to see the current approvals for the work being described — the HPA if one is required and the county’s shoreline exemption or permit — or written confirmation from the county and from WDFW that what you are asking for does not need them. If those do not exist, I do not start, and I will help you figure out what to file rather than quietly doing the job and leaving you holding the violation. Filing is the owner’s responsibility and I do not represent anyone at a permit counter. If the honest answer for your project is that it needs a marine contractor and a permit package, I will say that on the first visit and you will not owe me a project.

What that leaves is real work and plenty of it, because the above-water half of a dock is what actually wears out first. Fir and cedar decking on a dock takes more abuse than any deck on land: it is walked on wet, loaded with gear, and it never dries out between October and April. Boards fail at the fasteners and at the ends first, and by the time a board flexes under your heel the fastener has usually been working in a wet hole for a couple of seasons. I replace boards, correct the gapping so the deck actually drains, and use hot-dip galvanized or stainless hardware sized for the exposure. Nothing electroplated goes anywhere near saltwater; it will bleed rust down a new board in one winter and be a smooth pin in three.

Fasteners and corrosion are the whole story on a saltwater dock, and it is worth a paragraph of its own because it is the difference between a repair and an annual habit. Salt spray and immersion cycling attack ordinary galvanized coatings fast, and mixed metals in a wet joint corrode faster still — a stainless screw through a galvanized bracket is a small battery, and the bracket loses. When I open up a railing post or a ladder mount I am looking at what the fastener is doing to the wood and what the two metals are doing to each other, and I standardize the hardware on a given structure rather than adding a third metal to the collection.

Railings, ladders, and cleats are the safety items and they are what I check first. A railing post rotted at the deck line looks fine from ten feet and fails the moment somebody leans on it in a chop. Ladder rungs and their mounting bolts corrode where they alternate wet and dry, which is exactly the zone you grab on the way out of cold water. Cleats pull loose when the backing block behind them has gone soft, and a cleat is only as good as its blocking — replacing the cleat without replacing the block is theater. Where any of this involves the ladder or hardware below the high water line, that is back on the other side of the line and it goes to a marine contractor.

Non-slip is the thing owners underestimate and guests discover. A dock surface here is wet, shaded by the bank for part of the day, and coated in a biological film for most of the winter, which makes it the slickest walking surface on the property by February. Washing is the annual baseline. Beyond that I add adhesive grit strips or grit-embedded finish in the traffic path and on the gangway, where the slope makes it worse, and aluminum nosings where the treads have worn round. I keep it to the walking route rather than coating everything, both because it is cheaper and because a fully coated deck sheds a film of coating into the water eventually, which is not a thing to do on purpose.

The seasonal inspection is probably the most valuable thing on this page for an owner who is not here in the winter. Once a year, ideally in early fall before the weather turns, I walk the structure and write it up with photographs: every soft board, every corroded fastener, every loose railing post, the state of the ladder and cleats, the condition of the gangway hinge and its bearing points, wear at the transition from land to ramp, and specifically a list of anything I can see that belongs to a marine contractor rather than to me. That last list is the point. Below-water problems get found from above the water, and finding them in September is very different from finding them in February. It pairs naturally with a property care plan and with the same fall visit as the gutters.

Two logistics facts that shape what is possible. I run a 16-foot skiff, and 20-foot boards are the hard ceiling for what comes aboard, so if your dock needs longer stock or a real volume of decking, that comes by barge or chartered hauler billed at cost on top of the day rate. And on a waterfront site everything is a tide-window job. Access to a gangway hinge or the landward end of a ramp can be a two-hour opportunity on a given day, which is why I would rather plan a dock visit around the tide table and a specific list than show up with a general intention.