Haruto Kimura launched Arctic Marina in the spring of 2011 after spending several years watching vessels come and go from a makeshift gravel beach on the western shore of Lake Akan with nowhere proper to tie up. The nearest full-service yard was a four-hour drive south, and most boat owners in the Kushiro area were improvising: dragging vessels onto trailers, storing them in backyards, doing engine work on the ice in March. Colin had been working as a marine mechanic in Hay River and had saved enough to lease a strip of shoreline from the territorial government. He poured the first dock pilings in June 2011, working with a local welding contractor and a borrowed excavator.