
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, June 7, 1993                   TAG: 9306070138
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Bill Cochran
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IF A BOAT HAD TIRES, THEY'D CHECK THEM, TOO

Bob McDonald and Michael Brown got the idea that a lot of people on Smith Mountain Lake would like to have their boat washed, including scrubbing the grime off the bottom, but few relish doing the job.

So the two business partners opened That Marine & Boat Wash at Hales Ford Bridge.

A customer pulls his craft into a special slot at the dock and a swarm of college-age attendants cleans the vinyl, polishes the chrome, vacuums the cockpit, pressure-washes the carpet, shines the windshield, restores the teak and puts a power brush to the hull. They will fill the tank with gas, too.

"If a customer has tires, we'll check them," McDonald said.

The power wash is done with recycled lake water that contains no cleaning compounds, which means it meets new federal environmental standards, Brown said.

Boats up to 35 feet or 11,000 pounds can be handled by a lift that raises a craft out of the water so the hull can be scrubbed. A customer can even rent a Sea-Doo personal watercraft while waiting for the service to be completed.

The cleaning fee is $1.50 per foot for the top portion of a boat; $2 per foot for the hull (bottom).

"Everybody is saying, `This is a greatest idea we've ever seen, why didn't we think of it?' " Brown said.

"You couldn't ask for a better summer job," said Sacha Erb, one of the attendants.

by CNB