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Lake Minnetonka has long been an attraction of influential people. This dates back to the visit
of President Grant in the late 1800’s. In the last 10 years, President George Bush visited for a
fundraising event and Presidential candidate Romney also attended a fundraising event a mile
from the boat yard.

In the mid 1980’s musician Prince immortalized the lake in the movie Purple Rain with the
phrase, “you need to purify your soul in the waters of Lake Minnetonka”. Lake Minnetonka
was even the centerpiece of a few episodes of
“Keeping up with the Kardashians” . But this
summer something different happened, we started
getting concerts on the lake. In August we had
Tim McGraw at a private home and in September
they shut down the streets in Wayzata for Big and
Rich along with Randy Houser, and Rick Paslay. Tim McGraw Public Concert on South Side of Lake

There is just a different energy around the lake.

This energy and attention has worked well with our mission of considering ourselves a
“National Marina”. Many years ago we chose to adopt a philosophy that we are a national
marina by aligning ourselves with the training, appearance, and practices of the leaders of our
industry. This does not mean we do not have a local market to remain competitive with,
certainly we do. However, we choose to keep our facilities in top-notch condition while some
of our competitors offer a “different” boating experience.

Our goal is to bring other facilities up to our level and to create a boating experience that leads
the nation. If first-time boaters have a good experience on our pontoon boats and they join our
boat club, or buy a boat and stay with us, that’s a huge success. If they have a good experience
and continue their passion of boating with another facility, we still win because introducing new
people to boating strengthens our industry, and that is a win for all of us.

We are on the front line of expanding boating, quite frankly all marinas are. All of the “top
down” advertising in the world cannot undo a negative experience at the local level on a lake or
river. If we really want the industry to grow, marinas must follow through on the messaging of
the industry and provide services to accommodate the reduced “spare time” of people that show
up at our door. As an industry, if we do not offer the services to make boating easy, people will
spend their money in a different industry.

That is the biggest differentiator of Rockvam Boat Yards.
We want your money!

That’s a little funny to say. But we have evolved with boating. We have modernized by adding
services and removing unprofitable areas. We have changed and adjusted. We are not the same
marina of 1961. We are in the same location but that business is a distant relative to today’s
version. We provide the “value of time” for our customers, and as such we charge for it.
There’s no apology for it because people want the convenience and it makes their boating/free
time experience top-notch.

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