Your marina appeals to both boaters and onlookers wanting to make the most of their time at the waterfront. It provides boaters with quick, easy access to their vessels and visitors with ample space to enjoy a beautiful view.
Anyone can access boats, yachts, and other vessels kept at your marina, however. These water vehicles can represent millions of dollars worth of property, providing high-value targets for criminals. Effective marina security requires you to consider how criminals can access water vehicles. Criminals may walk through the front gate, paddle, or swim into a marina, so you need to plan accordingly.
A comprehensive approach to securing your marina is key. Knowing the ins and outs of marina security can help you identify any issues and address them before any losses occur. Let’s look at how you can use video surveillance and other solutions to keep your marina safe.
What Marina Security Options Are Available?
Your goal: Secure your marina without disrupting your guests. This goal may seem like a pipe dream at first, but using appropriate options can deliver a major ongoing boost in safety and security. Top security options for marinas include:
1. Signs
Signs make it clear who is allowed in certain areas of your marina. Your signage should be placed at designated spots where you want to clarify who has access to your marina. Placement can make a huge difference in terms of effectiveness. Signs should also include easy-to-understand terms, phrases, and images, so anyone who reads them knows exactly what they mean.
2. Fencing
Fences provide barriers to prevent unwanted access to your marina. They can simultaneously be visually appealing and make it tough for criminals to enter. The type of fence you use and its placement is paramount. Chain-link fences can be effective but can hamper your marina’s visual appeal; a wrought iron-style fence can be more expensive but is effective in keeping out unwanted visitors. Your fencing can be placed in areas around water vehicles to help hide the vessels from criminals and deter them from gaining access.
3. Gates
Gates work in a similar fashion to fencing. They let you manage access to your marina’s piers and entrance without damaging visual appeal. You can install gates with adjoining side panels that discourage criminals from climbing over and around them. Your gates’ lock controls should also be placed at least an arm’s length away to prevent prying hands from reaching them.
4. Locks
You can install locks to control access to your parking lot, restrooms, and other areas. Locks require you to provide boaters with keys or keycards or assign them keypad access codes. Locks can deter criminals from entering different areas but offer no guarantees, regardless of which option you select. Keys can be easily reproduced and distributed, while keycards or keypad access codes can be stolen or used by unauthorized parties.
These options can only do so much to keep your property safe from criminals, however. You need to look beyond standard security options to protect your marina. This requires you to develop an extensive plan to improve security.
5 Ways to Enhance Marina Security
Preventing unauthorized access to your marina is an ongoing effort, regardless of which security options you use. You need a comprehensive plan to ensure that your property is consistently secure. Here are five tips to help you develop and execute a solid security plan.
1. Evaluate Your Security Posture
Take an objective look at the security around your marina. Meet with boaters and learn about their security concerns, and analyze any past criminal activity. A clear understanding of your security posture lets you know what’s working and what’s not. It can set the stage for the development of a plan that consistently minimizes risk.
2. Create a Security Strategy
Develop a security strategy that accounts for the needs of boaters and onlookers. Determine how much you can spend on security tools and technologies. You should also consider how you will integrate different security tools and technologies into your marina, how long it will take to deploy them, and who will be required to install, maintain, and support them. Your security strategy should let you deter criminal activity without hampering boaters and onlookers. It should be executed slowly and carefully; otherwise, you risk costly security errors that can put boaters and other visitors in danger.
3. Use Basic Security Measures
Leverage fencing, gates, and other basic security measures. This lets you immediately improve security. Evaluate the effectiveness of your initial security measures and adjust them as needed.
4. Deploy Video Surveillance
Set up remote video surveillance to record all marina activity. Video cameras can also deter criminals from entering your property. Remote video security surveillance on its own is insufficient. You need a video surveillance expert that can evaluate your marina and determine the ideal places to set up cameras. This expert can help you get the best results from your surveillance equipment and boost safety.
5. Assess Your Results
Track the effectiveness of your efforts. Ongoing evaluation and continuous improvement are crucial to optimize security.
Marina security should be a top priority, every day. You can develop and execute a strategy to improve it, but you should also anticipate and account for problems that can arise along the way.
Common Challenges of Marina Security
You want boaters and onlookers to feel secure any time they visit your marina. But issues can crop up that make it tough to get the most value out of your security strategy, including:
- Security tools and technologies are difficult to use
- Your security measures inadvertently limit authorized access to your marina
- Fences, gates, or other measures create eyesores
Marina security assistance is available. Working with an expert can help you identify and address challenges to maximize the return on your investment.
Contact an Expert With Questions About How to Improve Marina Security
There is no shortage of options to improve marina security. The experts at Mobile Video Guard can help you evaluate your property and develop an effective security strategy.
Mobile Video Guard offers remote video surveillance monitoring for marinas. We can review your property, find security risks, and offer solutions to secure it now and in the future. Contact our expert team to speak with an expert about your remote video security surveillance needs.
