Sebago Dock & Lift, Inc.

10/10/2026

The dock gets all the attention in October. The lift is what fails in May.

Four things worth doing to a boat lift before it sits all winter.

Run the cable through your hands, the whole length, with a glove on. You are feeling for broken strands. One snapped wire standing up off the lay is the warning you get before a cable lets go, and it almost always turns up at a pulley or where the cable wraps the drum. Find one and replace the cable. Do not wait to see whether it gets worse.

Get the load off the winch. A winch left under tension all winter is a spring somebody held compressed for six months. Crank it down, block the cradle, let the gear train rest.

Pull the wheels, or get them up off the ground. Tires and bearings that sit in one spot in freezing mud come out of winter out of round and stiff. Twenty minutes in October, against a morning with a bottle jack and a torch in May.

Take the motor and the control box off and store them dry. Water works its way into a housing over the winter, freezes, and the spring no-start is what you get for it. A few bolts, and it lives a lot better in a garage than on a post.

Then grease everything you can reach, once it is dry, not before.

None of that depends on who built your lift. Questions about yours, call us.

207-209-2924

10/09/2026

Ten years is the number that matters.

Anybody can sell you something that looks right in May. The question is what it looks like after ten Maine winters, ten ice-outs, ten seasons of kids jumping off the end of it.

We still get calls from people who bought in the nineties. Not to complain — to order something else, or to ask what we would do about a bank that has changed on them. That is the whole business, right there.

The reason is not a secret. Marine-grade aluminum does not rot, does not rust, and does not need to be stained every other June. It comes apart in the fall and goes back together in the spring. There is nothing on it that wears out in a way you cannot replace.

Same shop, same road, same phone number.

Lay yours out: design.sebagodock.com
207-209-2924

10/08/2026

Before the ice comes: three things worth doing on your waterfront this month.

Pull what was designed to come out. Anything rigid left at the waterline takes the load when the ice expands and then moves at ice-out. That is why so much shoreline damage turns up in April — it happened all winter and you saw it in the spring.

Write down what already moved. Walk the stairs, the walkway, the footings near the water. An inch of heave in a season is nothing. Four winters of an inch is a run that no longer meets its landing. Note it now and you will know next spring whether it is settling or just settled.

Leave the bank plants alone. The vegetation along the top of your bank is what holds the soil everything else sits on. Losing it is the expensive part — far more than a dock.

None of this needs a contractor. It needs an hour and a notepad.

Got a shoreline question? Ask it below. That is what we are here for.

Sebago Dock & Lift · Casco, Maine · sebagodock.com

10/06/2026

A boat ran into one of our docks this summer.

Not a scrape. An actual hit.

Here is what happened next, and it is the reason we build the way we do. The damage stayed where the boat landed. One section. The frame is bolted together, so the hit did not travel down the dock looking for the next weak point.

The repair is a section. Not a season.

The part has a number. The section comes out, a new one goes in, and the rest of the dock never moved.

The other thing worth saying: aluminum tells you the truth. Where it gets struck it bends, and you can see exactly how far the damage went. Timber hides it. Decking can look perfectly sound over framing that cracked the day it got hit, and you find out two years later when somebody steps on it.

If something hit yours this season, say so now rather than at ice-out. Everything is easier to look at on dry land.

207-209-2924 · Naples, Maine

10/02/2026

Before you hire anybody to pull your dock this fall, ask these four questions. Ask us the same ones.

Where does it get stored, and who is responsible for it while it sits there?
A dock that survived twenty seasons in the lake can still be ruined in somebody's back lot. Find out whose lot, what is overhead, and who eats it if a limb comes down in an ice storm.

Are you insured, and for what?
A dock section is heavy, awkward, and it travels over cold water. Ask to see the certificate. Anybody legitimate hands it over without blinking.

Who is actually doing the work?
Some outfits hand removal off to whoever is free that week. That is not automatically a problem, but you should know it, because the crew that took it apart is the crew that knows how it goes back together.

What happens if something is already broken when it comes out?
You want that answer to be a phone call and a photograph in October. Not a surprise line item in April.

None of that is a trick question and none of it is aimed at anyone in particular. It is what we would ask if we were the ones doing the hiring.

207-209-2924 · Naples, Maine

10/01/2026

"Adjustable" on a set of shore stairs usually means the front legs. That is not the same thing.

It is worth knowing the difference before you buy, because it decides whether the stair still fits your bank in four years.

Adjustable front legs level the frame where it starts. Useful. But they do nothing about the ground under the rest of the run. So the stair gets set to a slope your site does not actually have, and the bottom landing ends up either hanging in the air or buried in the bank.

A real bank does not hold one slope. It steepens, it flattens, it steps over a ledge. And it moves — ice scours the shoreline every spring and takes soil with it.

Ours adjusts through the whole run. Pitch and rise, every section, set in the field with a wrench. When the ground shifts, we shift with it — one afternoon, not a demolition crew.

The rest of it is just as practical: marine-grade aluminum, powder coated start to finish, driven pipe with a bearing foot set on whatever is already there. No concrete. No excavation. No welding on site. And when it has to come out, it comes apart and the pipe pulls.

Steep site, loose rock, a bank that will not hold still? That is the one we want.

Call Nate at 207-209-2924· sebagodock.com

Sebago Dock & Lift · Casco, Maine

Maine-built docks, lifts, ramps & accessories. Quality residential & commercial waterfront solutions by Sebago Dock & Lift, an Alummikon company.

09/30/2026

Steep bank. Ledge. Dune. A slope that changes partway down.

This is the ground most stairs cannot handle, and it is most of the shoreline on these lakes.

Pitch and rise adjust through the whole run, not just at the front legs. Platforms go where the bank actually changes. No concrete, no excavation, no machine parked on a bank that took a century to settle.

Marine-grade aluminum, built in Naples, Maine.

See what yours would look like: design.sebagodock.com
207-209-2924

09/28/2026

Fifteen years, in writing.

That is the limited warranty that comes with what we build — materials and workmanship, to the original purchaser at the original site. Not a handshake. Not a line on a website about standing behind our work. An actual written warranty.

We can do that for one reason. Marine-grade aluminum does not rot and does not rust. There is no season where it has to be stripped, sanded or stained. It comes apart in the fall and goes back together in the spring, and the frame you bolt down in year fifteen is the same frame you started with.

Weather, ice and misuse are not covered, and they never are on anything sitting in a Maine lake. Everything else is on us.

If you want to know exactly what is covered before you spend a dollar, call and ask. We will read you the whole thing.

207-209-2924

09/24/2026

Walk your bank this month, before the leaves come down.

Not because anyone is selling you anything in September. Because of what you can actually see right now and will not be able to see in six weeks.

Three things worth looking at while the ground is still bare and dry:

Where you are already sliding. Find the path you and your kids actually take to the water — not the one on the survey. If there is a worn track with loose stone in it, that is the line a stair wants to follow, and it is also the spot somebody gets hurt on in wet leaves.

What moved since spring. Stand where you stood in May. Has the top of the bank cut back? Is a root exposed that was not? Take one photo from a fixed spot and you have a baseline you can compare against next year. That single photo is worth more than any opinion.

Where the water actually is. Note the level now and where it sat in June. A run that lands perfectly in August can be a two-foot drop off the last tread in spring.

None of that requires a contractor. It requires forty minutes and your phone.

Do it this month and next spring stops being an emergency.

Want to see what a run down your bank would look like? Call Nate at 207-209-2924· sebagodock.com

Sebago Dock & Lift · Casco, Maine

Maine-built docks, lifts, ramps & accessories. Quality residential & commercial waterfront solutions by Sebago Dock & Lift, an Alummikon company.

09/22/2026

Most people size a dock by looking at the water. The water is the easy part.

What decides the layout is the bank, the bottom and how far the level moves between June and November. A shoreline that drops off fast wants a different frame than one that stays shin deep for forty feet. Ledge takes a different footing than sand.

You can lay out your own and see it drawn before you ever call anybody. Pick the shape, the length, the decking, the connection to shore, and the tool builds it.

Then if it needs a set of eyes on it, we are right here and we have been on these lakes since 1994.

Start here: design.sebagodock.com
Or call 207-209-2924.