The expansion includes 300’ of dinghy dock, approximately 10’ wide that slopes from 18” to 10” freeboard.

Meeco Sullivan recently completed an extensive expansion to Barrington Yacht Club in Barrington, RI, one of the oldest yacht clubs in the Northeast. The club is situated on Tyler Point where the Barrington River meets the Warren River and feeds into Narraganset Bay, New England’s largest estuary. This is a very popular boating area for both motorboats and sailboats.

David Reid Materne, Barrington’s Club Commodore, was actively involved in leading this expansion project with the help of the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council, Harbor Engineering, LLC which handled all the engineering and permitting work, Atlantic Marine Construction which performed removal of all old and installation of all new piles as well as all the in-water assembly of the docks, utilities and repairs to the pier facility and Meeco Sullivan, which was responsible for the design, construction and on-time delivery of all the new custom floating dock systems.

This expansion project was part of the Yacht Club’s goal of growing both its youth and adult yachting programs and Meeco Sullivan’s ability to deliver such a highly customized dock design provided a superior platform for these programs to utilize.

The Barrington expansion sits at the end of Tyler Point peninsula, which meant the dock designs had to wrap around the corner.

The project included:

• 100 new uncovered slips with IPE Decking, three distinct sections (North, Mid and South) constructed as a monolithic dock system that can accommodate boats from 10 to 60 ft.
• 170’ of fuel dock designed with internal pile guides to allow for maximum loading of the dock as well as flotation and structure required to support an 8’ x 10’ enclosed office structure, ice coolers and fuel pumps/utilities.
• 300’ of dinghy dock, approximately 10’ wide that slopes from 18” freeboard to approximately 10” freeboard.

• Two of the 100’ long sections of dinghy dock are sloped into a mitered corner and designed to support dinghies and inflatable boats with small outboard motors. 70’ linear feet of Opti sailboat storage dock, designed to support racking and three boat high storage of Opti sailboats at 18” freeboard.
• 160’ linear feet of 420 sailboat storage dock, sloped from 18” to 6” over a 15’ wide span on the back side of a 6’ wide main dock.

Matt Beechinor, Meeco Sullivan’s Northeast Regional Sales Manager who oversaw this project said “the layout and overall design of the club was a challenge because of the boundary created by the shoreline, mooring field and Federal Navigation Channel. Also, the Club sits at the end of Tyler Point peninsula, which meant the area to build the new club wrapped around the corner.”

Gus Kreuzkamp, PE of Harbor Engineering added “in addition to the physical limitations of the marina, we also had to plan for a wide variety of boats (from dinghies to 40-foot sport fishing boats) all the while keeping in mind the strong river current for both slip orientation and fairways. To account for all these challenges, the only way to maximize the basin area was to have the floats run parallel to the curvy shoreline which could not be accomplished with traditional dock construction that has true 90-degree angles. The floats also had to provide a wide range in specific freeboard requirements from 18 inches down to 6 inches in areas for dinghies and small sailboats that are stored on the docks. Meeco Sullivan did an amazing job bringing my vision for this challenging project to fruition.”

Meeco Sullivan handled all the structural and material design of the docks as well as all of the buoyancy calculations. William Stoothoff drafting manager for Meeco Sullivan’s Warwick, New York office commented that “our two biggest challenges were designing the dock system to handle all the appropriate loads at the right freeboard heights and at the right angles requested by the Yacht Club and Harbor Engineering. This was especially critical in the area where the mitered corner connects the two 100’ long sloped docks.” In this area, each frame of the sloped docks was individually designed and buoyancy compensated for because each frame had to be a different size as it transitioned into and out of the sloping corner.”

While Meeco Sullivan has done work for numerous marinas in this area, this was their first dock project for Barrington Yacht Club and as David Materne commented “we couldn’t have asked for a better partner for this project. Meeco Sullivan has been very patient and helped us through the early planning and budgeting stages as well as the challenging design phase. Plus, they met our ambitious timeframe. The finished dock systems not only look great but our youth and adult members couldn’t be happier with how functional they are.”