Humble Beginnings – 1976
In the early 1970s, Port Canaveral had almost no marina facilities to speak of. The only option was Dell’s Marina, a modest operation of about ten slips, a small bait shop, and a fuel dock, sitting in water so shallow that boats would rest on the bottom at low tide. Where Cape Marina stands today was little more than a sandy shoreline, a place where locals waded out at night with lanterns and gigs to catch flounder while the Port Authority dredged and filled the back basin.
Gerald “Jerry” Seaman saw an opportunity. At the time he was an engineer with General Electric, working the graveyard shift on nuclear submarines that came into the port for their final shakedown, a coveted assignment he had earned after a tour aboard the submarine tender Canopus in Rota, Spain. Between shifts, he was finishing a Master’s degree at the Florida Institute of Technology, and for his thesis he chose a subject close to home: a design and development plan for a new marina at Port Canaveral.
To test the idea, Jerry mailed 500 postcards to registered boaters asking a simple question. If a marina like this existed, would you use it? Nearly 450 wrote back, almost all of them saying yes. The thesis earned an A, and more importantly it earned the confidence of John Eddy, a loan officer at the First National Bank of Cape Canaveral, who helped secure an SBA loan. Jerry brought in his friend and neighbor Bill Parker, a fellow FIT engineer, and together with Jerry’s late wife Rose and Bill’s wife Louise, the four founders pulled together the financing by borrowing, liquidating assets, and betting everything they had on the vision.
In February 1976, after meeting with the port’s first manager, George King, and the Port Commissioners, the founders signed a 50-year lease. Ground broke that same month. Working with limited funds, they made the choices that would come to define the marina, investing in concrete pilings and durable aluminum dock modules from Gator Marine for the long haul, even while economizing elsewhere. When money for barges and cranes ran short, they improvised, floating support beams into place on the docks themselves and hauling dock modules on a converted boat trailer. Bill, Rose, Louise, and Jerry worked 14-hour days, seven days a week.
By July 1976 they were ready to welcome their first dockage customers, Richard and Nancy Umlauf, and Cape Marina officially opened its doors that September as one of the first and largest leaseholders in Port Canaveral.
50 Years Later – A Future Unknown
In the decades since, Cape Marina has grown into a full-service home for the recreational and commercial boating community of Brevard County and the greater Orlando area. Today the marina spans more than 10 acres and offers 115 wet dockage slips, 100 rentable mini-storage units, and a complete active and inactive yard with dry storage. Our services include fuel, bait, and tackle, a straddle-crane haul-out for larger vessels, and one of the marine industry’s rare do-it-yourself yards, where boat owners are welcome to work on their own boats. Thousands of migratory yachts stop with us for fuel on their run north and south each year. In 2011, we added a pool and game room to our list of amenities.
Nearly 50 years on, Cape Marina remains what it has always been: an independent, family-run business. Jerry Seaman is still President and CEO, though the day-to-day is now in the capable hands of his daughter, Karen Burk, and his grandson, Dylan Houck.
With our original 50-year lease, and the short-term extensions that followed it, now coming to an end, the future of this land is uncertain. The Port has signaled its intention to take control of the property and build a new marina in its place, which may bring Cape Marina as you have known it to a close. We do not yet know exactly what comes next. We may move on. We may stay on as operators. We may put five decades of experience into a new marine venture altogether. What we do know is that the people, the knowledge, and the commitment that built this place are not going anywhere.
Cape Marina and its crew thank all of our loyal customers for making these five decades possible. Whatever the next chapter holds, we look forward to meeting it the way we always have: together, and on the water.
