2024 January/February Marina World

TALKING SHOP
Left & below: Hurricane Sally ripped
through Zeke’s Landing Marina in Alabama
leaving a trail of destruction.
A resilient rebirth at
Zeke’s Landing
When Hurricane Sally hit the US Gulf Coast in September 2020, Zeke’s Landing
Marina in Orange Beach, Alabama lay directly in its path. While it incurred
substantial damage, a dedicated team armed with ambitious plans saw the
marina reopen just eight months later. Charlotte Niemiec invites marina owner,
Lynne Swafford, to talk shop.
Orange Beach, Alabama is well
known as a water sports hub, with yearround
warm weather, soft white sand,
seafood galore and plenty of activities,
such as sailing and dolphin spotting, to
explore. A hub of maritime activity in the
area for more than three decades, the
marina offers the largest charter fleet in
the Gulf of Mexico, along with its sister
sites Sportsman Marina and San Roc
Cay Marina. The marina, which was
established in 1988 to build upon its
premier restaurant that opened three
years earlier, has always focused on
charter fishing boats, reserving its wet
slips for private boats.
When Hurricane Sally battered
Orange Beach with 110mph (177kph)
winds, it devastated the region and
obliterated many parts of the marina.
Only the category 5 hurricane-rated,
220 slip dry storage building stood
firm against the storm as the team
helplessly watched Sally sweep away
all the docks and the dock store.
Undeterred, the team began to
rebuild and successfully reopened
the dock store in April – just
seven months later. The docks
reopened a month after that
and a redesigned restaurant in
September 2022. The marina’s
revamped facilities now boast a
reconstructed office, a dockside
gift and apparel shop, and an event
centre, all fortified with state-of-theart
infrastructure designed to hold
up against the strongest storm.
With its new lease of life,
the team envisions the marina
becoming a year-round business
rather than a seasonal one, as it
seeks to expand its operations,
introduce more activities to
foster stronger relationships
with customers and extend its
conservation efforts beyond the
marina’s immediate environs. “The
focus will be on fish conservation, reef
restoration programmes and making
conservation a lifestyle rather than an
effort,” Lynne Swafford explains.
Lessons learned
The speed and quality of the
reconstruction effort stands as a
testament to the team’s collective
dedication
as it rallied to
bring supplies
together
against all
odds. Learning
valuable
lessons from
the rebuilding
process,
Zeke’s Landing
Lynne Swafford
prioritised strategies that would “futureproof”
the marina in the event of further
hurricanes.
“Predicting storm strength is
challenging, so we went beyond current
codes,” Swafford says. “We introduced
breakaway pilings to minimise the
impact on infrastructure if a boat breaks
a piling. We revised our hurricane
plan to make it mandatory for boats to
leave Orange Beach if it is in the cone
of a named storm. We installed larger
pilings, relocated our dock store and
improved our drainage systems. We
enhanced our fuel system with triple-
24 www.marinaworld.com – January/February 2024