Snagged a pair of floating drive-on jet ski docks

My old 1995 Polaris SLT 750 jet ski has a new battery and is all cleaned up but it needs a method for dry docking to keep it up out of the saltwater when not in use.  I imported a pretty good trailer with the ski and brought back new tires for it from my last trip to Florida.  I recently found a public boat ramp
only 5.5 miles from the house.  I also installed a class 3 hitch on the truck.  So while I could trailer the ski in and out with my truck, that is a lot of trouble if all I want to do is to zip out the inlet for a few minutes to practice my free diving and then come back quickly.  So I really wanted to get a floating drive-on dock for the ski.

As luck would have it, someone here in Freeport just happened to be selling a pair of them packaged with a floating finger dock for $3k.  Since I only needed one of the drive-ons I offered $1500 but the seller really wanted the pair of them gone so he verbally agreed to $2300 for package and money should change hands tomorrow.  While the wood on this floating finger dock is not in the best condition, it's the floats that matter.  I can clad the existing unit with Hardieboard and it will last a long time.  

This was an excellent find in several ways.  First, these drive on ski docks cannot be found for sale new on the island.  They cost about $1500 new + shipping.  So call it $1700.  And then I would have to trouble someone to get it to the shipping freight port and these items are bulky.  And then shipping would have been another $500 and then 65% customs duty.  So by the time I got it, the price would have doubled to about $3000 and I would owe someone a big favor for their time helping me getting it shipped.  Thus I am excited to be able to purchase them at stateside prices here in Freeport AND get free delivery right to my canal by the current owner.  

This purchase will actually solve a couple of issues.  First it will give me the floating drive-on jet ski dock that I want.  But that has to be tied up to something and without a floating finger dock as shown in the picture above, it would have to be roped to a piling.  And if that is used as a solution then driving onto the unit is trickier and it also becomes a bit of a chore to get onto and off of the jet ski from my backyard non-floating dock.  It also seems reasonable to use this finger dock as part of the solution for getting on and off of Third Wave safely which has also been a nagging problem.

One way of doing this would be to reconfigure the orientation of the skis to the floating finger dock as shown below.  Orange represents my fixed dock, blue is the new floating finger dock, grey is the swim platform on Third Wave, green is Third Wave, yellow are the two new drive on floating jet ski docks and red is the jet ski. Since one of the drive-on jet ski slips will not be used presently I might even decide to sell it to recoup some of my initial purchase price.  

In this configuration, the finger dock would be 24" inches below the main dock at mean low water.  A new set of steps on the floating dock would bridge that distance.  Because the boat and the floating dock are both floating, the deck of the floating dock would always be about 9-10" above the dive platform on Third Wave.   

I can't wait to get the ski back in the water.  Third Wave gets 0.5 mpg at 18mph and is not something easily used for short runs but the jet ski can be taken out on a whim and gets more like 6mpg at full speed of 45mph.  And with Third Wave I have to be constantly aware of water depth when going places I have not been before.  It even gets dicey going out Smith's Point Inlet right now given how badly it has silted up.  But you can't hurt a jet ski in the Bahamas unless you run it into coral or something hard because the impeller is not exposed like yacht propellers are.  Of course, in 5-7 foot seas you will be glad that you are on Third Wave and not some jet ski when out trying to haul in 70 lb yellowfin tuna.  So they are just two different tools for two different jobs.