All right.
Our solution to our overcrowding is very self-explanatory. We need a larger facility.
Our wharves are all basically crib structures. When they were built they were built to accommodate a vessel that was 36 feet in length and 10 to 12 feet in width. I don't know if any of you can picture this, but we berth our boats abreast of each other, so when the wharf was built, we had two fingers coming out—the main wharf and the fingers. I brought you some pictures, but we'll pass them around later. We would be able to put perhaps four or five vessels on this finger and four or five vessels on another finger, and that still allowed safe navigation in and out of the berth.
The boats did increase to where they could be less than 40 feet. Generally, they were less than 40 feet in length and maybe 17 feet in width. That was considered a good-sized vessel. It stayed that way for a long time, until perhaps four or five years ago. Then all of a sudden we started seeing vessels come in that were 50 feet in length and starting at 24 feet in width. And they are getting wider. I haven't seen it myself, but I hear there's one coming off the slip that's about 25 or 26 feet wide. They're going to be square pretty soon.
If you just think about it and do the math, now we have a 24-foot vessel that we have to berth and put beside another 24-foot vessel, so that is 48 feet. Those two boats are taking up basically three to four berths that would have been used with smaller vessels. So our numbers are coming down, but we're becoming overcrowded because of the size of the boats.
Stop and think, too, of those two fingers. I have two vessels over here that are 24 feet wide, and I need some water in there for them to move around. Then over there I have to put a small boat and a big boat, so maybe I'll go with a 17 foot and a 24 foot. It's not only tying them up; it's navigating in and out. It takes about 60 feet to turn a boat that's 50 feet long and 25 feet wide, and when you're trying to do it in 20 feet, it just doesn't work. It depends a lot on the captain too, and whatever. It all looks easy in perfect conditions, but if you get a little weather going and you try to get those boats in and out, it is just not working.
In 1968 the average vessel cost about $5,500. That was about 36 feet by 12 feet. Now we're looking at upwards of $200,000 per vessel—and that's your livelihood. You're trying to put that into a facility where it's getting banged to pieces every time you do it. You're losing equipment. You're losing the sides of your boat, your ribbing, your windows, everything else. The wharves were not built to accommodate the newer vessels.
That's an issue for us.
How do we solve it? We need more room. When we look at designing or building a new facility, we have to look at the reality of what the men who bring those boats in and out are going to be dealing with. We looked at some plans that came down to Woods Harbour for a proposed expansion to the Falls Point facility. It had a basin of x number of feet. The engineers who designed it, with every good intention, were saying, okay, this is what we should do and this will work. They unrolled it, and I think they thought we were going to say yes, okay. Fortunately, we looked at it and said no, that won't work. We have to be very careful when we build or expand, in whatever we do from now on, that it's going to be built to accommodate the vessels that are in place now.
I'm sorry I got a little bit carried away.
Did I answer your question on that one?