ANTELOPE ISLAND -- The Great Salt Lake is full, but the marina at Antelope Island State Park is not. And that is something park rangers hope to change.
With 92 slips to rent and only about a half-dozen being used, the rangers want to see sailboats, personal water craft and other watercraft docked at the marina.
Antelope Island State Park Manager Jeremy Shaw said the monthly rent for the slips at the marina will be reduced to half price until the end of the season.
The rent for a marina slip regularly runs from $125 to $175 a month, depending on the size of the slip and whether power is available.
The rent is in addition to the park fee of $7 and the Davis County causeway $2 fee. A state park pass, which allows unlimited entry to all 41 parks for the year, costs $75. Also it costs $10 for an unlimited pass for the Davis County causeway.
The brine flies are in abundance around the island, but once a person gets out on the water, the bugs are not a problem, Shaw said. For the past several years while there was a drought, the lack of water in the marina made it impossible for boats to use it, Shaw said. The marina currently has 12 to 15 feet of water.
"I just think people got used to the idea that the marina was not available," Shaw said.
If a person just wants to bring a boat to launch and not dock at the marina, that is covered with the park and causeway fees, Shaw said.
In the past, sailboats docked at the marina, but Shaw said fresh-water boats can be used on the lake as long as the owner flushes the motor out with fresh water. State park rangers pull the state park boats out of the lake once a week to flush the motors.
The lake reached its lowest point since 1961 this past winter, said Dave Shearer, harbor master at the Great Salt Lake Marina, which is at the south end of the lake.
That marina is 75 percent full, with 275 boats docked at the 320 slips available.
In the past three years, because of the low lake level, the boating season at the south marina was over by July, but Shearer said the lake level is high enough that boaters are at the lake almost daily.
Last year 60 percent of the boats docked at the Great Salt Lake Marina were trapped because the water was too shallow to get them out.
The entrance fee to the Great Salt Lake Marina is $2 per vehicle and the rental fees for the slips run between $125 and $140 a month.
For more information about boating at Antelope Island call 801-773-2941, and for more information about boating at the Great Salt Lake Marina call 801-209-9142.
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