Shangri La Marina

Located conveniently mid-lake at the tip of Monkey Island, Shangri La Marina is Grand Lake’s favorite stop for fuel, food and supplies.  With a full service ship store offering clothing, boat accessories, cleaning supplies, snacks, beer and soft drinks, the marina also offers experienced hands-on service on the dock with both fuel and pump-out facilities.  Personal watercraft riders will especially appreciate easy ride-on fuel Hydroport fuel docks.

With 189 covered slips (24-60 feet in length), a handful of uncovered sailboat slips and Hydroports for easy access and secure dockage for personal watercraft, Shangri La Marina is one of the largest marinas on Grand Lake.  Even with its size, the marina’s popularity among boaters often results in a waiting list for rental slips.  When the marina was purchased by Shangri La Golf Club and Resort owner Eddy Gibbs in May, 2011, an expansion and marina improvement plan was announced, including the addition of another 70 slips and expanded marina services.

 Shangri La Marina is also home to the popular Island Joe’s Kentena open-air club and restaurant featuring lunch, dinner, full bar service and, on weekends during the season, live entertainment.  It is also host to Sail Grand, offering boat and personal watercraft rentals, water trampoline fun for the kids, parasailing and yacht charter services.

 Convenient courtesy transportation is also available to the Shangri La Golf Club and Resort club house facilities and golf course.  All activities and membership offerings of the club are now accessible by both land and water. 

 Shangri La Marina’s brokerage and used boat sales operations are expanding daily; and Nichols Marine has facilities on location in the marina, as well, offering the complete line of new Chaparral Boats.  The complete line of Hydrohoist lift products is also available.

 Check us out by land at the tip of Monkey Island (Highway 125 ends in our parking lot) or witness our easy-in, easy-out access for yourself.  The no-wake zone providing protected access to our fuel docks and courtesy slips is only 50 yards from our state-of-the-art breakwater.  We’re not just the best.  We’re the most convenient, too!

 Whether you want to buy a boat, sell a boat, charter a boat, rent a boat or enjoy a leisurely lunch or cocktail while your boat is fueled, prepared and provisioned for a great day on the water, Shangri La Marina is truly Grand Lake’s most desirable and convenient one-stop shopping spot for all your boating needs.

Brad Williams Takes the Helm

Improvements, Expansion and New Services Planned

(Monkey Island, OK)  Brad Williams has spent most of his life on Grand Lake.  As a teenager, he sanded boat bottoms, washed boats and pumped gas.  His love of boats, boating and boaters never wavered.  He has worked ship stores and fuel docks, sold boats and yachts on Grand Lake and at one of the nation’s most prestigious dealerships, managed megayachts and captained them through the waters of the Atlantic and Caribbean.  Now, he has returned to Grand Lake to take the helm of one of the largest marinas on the lake – Shangri La Marina.  His extensive experience leaves little room for surprises.

Even before he went to college, Brad realized he had such a passion for boats that he was able to help people match their lifestyle choices with the proper boat.  He became one of the youngest boat salesmen on Grand Lake, returning to the lake each summer to pursue his passion while completing work during the fall and spring months to graduate from Oklahoma State University with a degree in Business, followed by a successful boat sales career at Ugly John’s Custom Boats.

Brad actually left Grand Lake for a while, pursuing an opportunity to sell for one of the largest yacht brokers in the United States.  Staten Island Yacht Sales, based in New York, sold larger boats (upwards of 80 feet in length with price tags of nearly $8 million). 

“It was great preparation for the challenges ahead at Shangri La Marina,” Williams said.  “My time in New York provided me the opportunity to work with nearly every major manufacturer in the marine industry.  It also gave me a chance to learn an entirely new set of boating challenges ranging from complex electrical systems to new navigation aids; new propulsion systems to the unbelievable  environmental challenges in the rugged North Atlantic.”

Wanting to gather even more detailed information about the intricacies of boat care, operation and management, Brad obtained his U.S. Coast Guard Captain’s License.  That led to yet another open water thrill he had never anticipated.

“If you’ve never done it, you can’t imagine the thrill of breezing past the Statue of Liberty at the helm of a 100-ton vessel in one of the busiest harbors in the world,” he said.  That thrill stuck with him, taking him even deeper into the complex marine industry. 

As he sold bigger and bigger vessels, busy customers had little time or inclination to handle the tedious details required to maintain vessels in tip-top condition, especially with the corrosion problems created by salty air – and equally invasive and problematic salt water.  At the urging of friends and customers, Brad opened his own turnkey Yacht Management Service, providing preventive maintenance to keep boats in top condition.  Many of the vessels required a qualified captain on board when they headed to sea – so Brad began filling that need, as well.  He has been to virtually every marina on the east coast of the United States, traveling from Maine to Key West, as well as the Bahama Islands – and even the tricky passage to St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  He has spent some 3,000 hours at the helm of vessels in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea.

Expansion and Improvements Planned

With the purchase of Shangri La Marina by Shangri La Golf Club and Resort developer Eddy Gibbs earlier this month, Brad’s new job creates an exciting era for the legendary marina, improving and expanding to meet what he calls “the Gibbs standard.” 

“People can see what I’m talking about from watching what’s happening to the golf courses and the club house,” he said.  “Eddy Gibbs wants everything for our customers to be first class, and he doesn’t want them to have a need we can’t meet.  We are already working hard to make Shangri La Marina into a true full service marina.  We’ll add a service department, boat detailing and expanded boat sales operations, as well as additional slips and constant updating of facilities.” 

Although Nichols Marine will continue to offer the Chaparral boat line at Shangri La Marina with Kenny Smith handling the Nichols on-site operation, Williams said he will immediately begin offering brokerage boat sales with further plans for additional new and used boat sales offerings on the horizon.  Detailing services will be available this summer, complete with a full line of cleaning and boat care products in the Ship Store for do-it-yourselfers;  and he hopes to have service department operations in place before fall.

“Our goal is to become a one-stop shopping stop for all our customers’ boating needs,” Williams said.  “We want to do to the marina exactly what Eddy Gibbs and (General Manager) Jason Sheffield are doing to the rest of the Shangri La Golf Club and Resort property.  We want to meet every need our customers might have, and in a professional manner while offering a world class facility.”

Expanded services mean increased demand, of course, and that creates a need for expanded and improved facilities.  Additional courtesy docks and major expansion are planned, and some work is already underway.

“We have one new six-slip dock in the water and nearing completion right now,” Williams said.  “That brings us to 200 slips.  We have permits for an additional 70 slips, but we’ll need to do some dredging before those go in place.  Within the next couple of years, we should have a total of 270 slips,” he said.

Some Things Remain the Same

The staff at Shangri La Marina is already accustomed to one of Brad Williams’ favorite phrases:  “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he laughs.  “We’ll be busy making improvements and planning expansion, but customers will see the same familiar faces on the docks and in the Ship Store,” he said.  “Kenny Smith will be here from Nichols Marine with the Chaparral boats, Mitch Whitehead will continue offering parasailing, boat and personal watercraft rentals and yacht charters at the Sail Grand facilities in the marina, and Tena Smith and her crew will continue operating Island Joe’s Kentena club and restaurant.  We want to improve and expand our services to customers, but we’re not looking to change anything just for the sake of change,” he said.

Brad is obviously excited about the future on Grand Lake.  Despite waking up most mornings in some of the most magnificent anchorages in the world, Brad’s Grand Lake roots were always firmly intact.  He missed his friends, his family and sleeping in his own home and his own bed.  Fortunately for Grand Lake boaters, Brad is back home now, with a vast amount of additional knowledge and experience to share, along with his continuing commitment to detail, quality service and a professional approach.  He’s in familiar waters, but at a new helm, managing marina operations at one of Grand Lake’s largest and most popular marinas, Shangri La Marina at the tip of Monkey Island.