Making Port at Rocketts Landing

Thursday, April 23, 2009

The marina at Rocketts Landing is coming-about. Forty of the planned 125 floating dock slips are complete and scheduled to open May 1st.

The slips hug the James River’s east bank and will cost boaters $10 per foot a month for an annual lease. Fifteen of the 40 slips have already been reserved – ten by Rocketts Landing residents (who receive first dibs) and five by non-residents.

In hopes of learning more on how the marina was constructed, I spoke with Jason Vickers-Smith of The WVS Companies (the developer of Rocketts Landing). In 2001, Vickers-Smith spearheaded the building of the 158-slip marina at Belmont Bay on the Occuquon River, a few miles south of Mount Vernon.

Unlike at Belmont Bay, the floating docks at the Rocketts Landing marina were constructed without any pilings and only with steel trusses holding them in place. The pivoting steel trusses measure 30-40 feet in length and are anchored just above the shoreline.                                                                                

According to Vickers-Smith, it would have been expensive and environmentally unsound to drive pilings into the riverbed in front of Rocketts Landing.  A thick layer of solid rock lines the riverbed in front of Rocketts, and the soil surrounding the bedrock stores a lot of the river’s pollutants (from long-ago days when the area was used for industry). Drilling would have required costly machinery and released the potentially harmful pollutants into the water.  

“The design of the docks using the pivoting steel arms instead of pilings might seem unusual, but it is not uncommon,” Vickers-Smith said. “So far, it has worked well.”

Other noticeable features of the marina are the wooden crib-docks left over from the early 1900s when Rocketts Landing was a thriving commercial port. Vickers-Smith said the marina was built around the crib docks to maintain an historic element.

The depth of the water at the docks varies from 6 feet to 7 feet at low tide. That should be more than enough room for most James River powerboats with a draft of 2-3 feet. No yachts or sail boats have signed onto a slip, but Vickers-Smith says he is hoping to be “pleasantly surprised” by the birth of one or two.

Vickers-Smith also says that The WVS Companies is considering the purchase of a boat that will be kept at the marina.

There are no plans in place as of yet for the marina’s opening day. However, Vickers-Smith said at some point he would like to host an event that celebrates the opening of the new Boathouse restaurant and the new marina simultaneously.