Marinas Empty as Hurricane Looms

Barrington’s marinas usually are hectic places during the last week of October as the annual boating season ends. The pace of hauling boats out of the water was noticeably quicker at the start of the weekend on Friday with Hurricane Sandy moving north.

“We’ve got three lifts running non-stop,” said Michael Keyworth, general manager at Brewer’s Cove Haven Marina in Barrington. “I don’t even have five minutes to talk.”

The latest forecast, Keyworth said as he ducked away into his office, is “thirty to seventy mph winds with the hurricane coming.”

Cove Haven actually was in a “lockdown” on Friday and expected to stay that way all this weekend. Workers were hoisting boats out of the water -- including a wooden Chinese junk -- and doing almost nothing else. All other work was put on hold. The front gate was closed.

“It’s the last big weekend anyway,” said manager Bruce Dufresne of Lighthouse Marina (former Lavin’s Marina) in Bay Spring. “October 31 is the end of the slip season.”

“About half of the boats have been put on trailers and taken out of here,” he estimated. “Most have been sitting here since Labor Day.”

Striper Marina on Tyler Point was jammed with boats on trailers ready to be driven elsewhere.

“We’re about half empty now,” said a worker. “Most of the rest will be out of here by the end of the weekend.”

Boats on trailers and trucks waiting to get their boats also lined Barton Avenue in front of Stanley’s Boatyard on Friday. Many slips at the Barrington Yacht Club also were empty.

Some boats were already gone for the season; others were out at sea taking one last trip before the curtain comes down on the 2012 boating season.

Don’t expect to see too many boats at Barrington’s marinas when Hurricane Sandy stops by early next week -- no matter how much wind and rain the hurricane packs.