The common perception is that docks are built from oak pilings. The fact is they’re created from mountains of red tape. If you really want to build a dock, before you so much as set foot in the water you’ll find yourself wading through a permit process that can take two years to complete.

No less than the town conservation commission, the planning board, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Environmental Protection, Coastal Zone Management, the Division of Marine Fisheries, the Division of Waterways, and maybe even the Board of Archeological Resources have to give you their stamp of approval before you can proceed.

Steve Ewing of Edgartown has been building docks on the Island for thirty years; he’s been through it all. And Steve’s advice is that before you do anything, sit down with an engineer or surveyor and a builder and draw up exactly what you want. If you’re going to go through a two-year approval process, you want to be buttoned up.

You should also know that between the permitting and the initial plans, you could spend somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000. Red tape is not cheap.

So let’s say you get your permit; now the real fun begins. It’s not like you can just run over to Home Depot and throw a dock building kit in the back of your pickup and then drive it down to the beach – everything has
to be brought in by barge.

First come the pilings. Depending on where your site is, you’ll use either oak or pressure-treated pilings. If you’re in a place where there’s good tidal water flow like the outer harbor of Edgartown, you can get away with using pressure-treated.

But if you’re in a more enclosed area such as a bay where water flow is restricted, you’ll have to use the more environmentally friendly oak.

Since the ocean floor around the Vineyard is most often sandy, high-pressure hoses are used to “jet” holes down ten feet deep. Then cranes lower the pilings into place. Once in place, a drop hammer drives the pilings down another five feet or so. 

Then, after the pilings are set, another barge delivers the lumber. It’s from here that the deck will be strung onto the pilings. This is not unlike building a deck off your house, with one important distinction: you’re in the water. You have to deal with tides, wind, and weather. And when all is said and done, you will spend, over and above the cost of the plans and permits, about $200 a running foot.

But it’s worth it, because when it’s completed you can look out with great pride and say:

“That’s my dock . . . and those are my cormorants.”