Sturgeon Bay Common Council Approves Tour-Boat Lease for Maritime Museum

This drawing shows the location of where a dock will be built near the Door County Maritime Museum to moor two 40-foot tour boats to operate starting this summer in the bay of Sturgeon Bay. Submitted.

Boat tours between Lake Michigan and Sherwood Point in the bay of Sturgeon Bay – which were offered for several years using a fireboat docked by the Door County Maritime Museum before they ended in 2018 – will be resuming this summer with a pair of 40-foot vessels known as “Liberty Launches.”

The Sturgeon Bay Common Council approved a four-year lease between the city and DoCo LLC, doing business as Shoreline Scenic Boat Tours of Red Wing, Minnesota. 

City Administrator Josh Van Lieshout said James Patterson, a longtime Door County vacationer with a chiropractic practice in Red Wing, purchased a number of Liberty Launches – named for smaller boats used by the U.S. Navy, such as during World War II, to service larger ships by transporting naval personnel to shore for their time off – and converted them for tour purposes.

“He’s proposing to moor two of them in Sturgeon Bay and will have another operation up the peninsula,” Van Lieshout said.

When contacted following the council meeting, Patterson said he is “super excited to be joining the community and offering tours in Sturgeon Bay.”

He said the boat tours will begin June 9, at the start of the Door County Lighthouse Festival weekend, with tours during the June 9-11 festival booked through the museum. After the festival is over, the Sturgeon Bay tours can be booked directly through the shorelinedoorcounty.com website. Patterson said the tours will head to either Sherwood Point or Lake Michigan, depending on the wind and weather conditions.

The entity called Shoreline Boat Tours will also start tours in Baileys Harbor from the town marina on Memorial Day weekend, Patterson said, with the booking for that weekend available through The Ridges Sanctuary for the annual Friends of Nature fundraiser.

“There will be a week of self-booking [after Memorial Day], and then the weekend of June 9-11, booking will be through the Maritime Museum for their Lighthouse Festival fundraiser,” he said. “Self-booking through our website will start up again after the weekend.” 

After the Lighthouse Festival weekend, the tour website lists morning, afternoon and sunset options Tuesday-Saturday through Labor Day weekend in both Sturgeon Bay and Baileys Harbor. Only morning and afternoon tours are scheduled for Sundays, and there are no Monday tours during that period.

Following Labor Day, there are no sunset tours scheduled Tuesday-Thursday in September. The tours wrap up Oct. 1 in Bailey Harbor and Oct. 15 in Sturgeon Bay, where they are scheduled only for Friday-Sunday that month.

Lease Terms

Van Lieshout said the structure of the lease to have the Liberty Launches moored by the Door County Maritime Museum is based on the one the city has with Great Lakes Towing, which moors its tugboats there, as it relates to items such as indemnification, liability, environmental responsibility and permitting.

“I think the big thing for the city is the term of the lease [running through the end of 2026],” he said. “The lease can renew automatically [for another year]. If the city wishes to get out of the lease, it requires a 180-day notice to Mr. Patterson. If Mr. Patterson chooses to exit the lease, it requires a 10-day notice.”

The reason why Patterson would need only a 10-day notice to end the lease, Van Lieshout said, is because he is concerned that, after making a substantial investment, if things change, “he would need sufficient time to find a new location to operate, and so we want to afford him that opportunity.”

“The city doesn’t have any plans for that area [where the boats would moor near the Maritime Museum],” Van Lieshout said. “I think it’s fairly well developed already, but I wanted to give Mr. Patterson some level of assurance.”

In the event Patterson would terminate the lease early, the agreement states he would have 30 days from giving notice to remove the infrastructure improvements he makes, which would include the dock he purchased and installed.

Along with the lease having a base rental charge of $5,000 annually, which would be subject to a yearly cost-of-living increase, Van Lieshout said there is a “rental abatement feature” of 75% for the total infrastructure improvement cost that the city would pay back to Patterson.

With the improvements estimated at $20,000, Van Lieshout said a portion would be paid back yearly during the term of the lease until the 75% is met, with the city approving the design and estimated costs prior to the infrastructure improvements being initiated. 

“This issue is caused, really, by the height of the bulkhead around the Maritime Museum,” he said. “It’s pretty high. Water levels have dropped. The Liberty Launches don’t have the free board or the deck height that the old fireboat had, so they’re much lower to board passengers safely on and off. It works best with some sort of floating dock structure.”

Van Lieshout said he believes the lease terms are “pretty reasonable. Frankly, I’m happy to have a new tour-boat operator in the city. I think it’s a neat amenity, and we’ve missed that for the last several years.”