All across the country, this Memorial Day weekend, boat owners will walk to their boat slips as lake season unofficially begins. But it’s a walk Scott Giles feared would never happen again.
In December 2023, a tornado tore directly through the middle of Anchor High Marina in Hendersonville. “There was a loud roar,” remembered Giles, who rode out the storm from a tornado shelter on the property. “The dock itself came up out of the water, and the only thing that kept it from blowing away was the ropes holding the boats. The boats kept the marina from blowing up and blowing away.”
The owner of the marina, Mitch Miller, knew at the time it would take at least a year to rebuild. He was terrified that most of their loyal tenants would never come back. “We’ve got close to 200 boats, and we’re going to lose all of them to other marinas,” Miller told us in 2023…