The owner of Lake Perry Yacht & Marina is just beginning to dig out from the mess created when ice from last week’s winter storm brought down the second-largest dock at the marina.

“It’s a long, methodical process,” said Bob Best, marina owner.

Lake Perry yacht & Marina owner Bob Best, left, surveys some of the damage at the marina after last week's ice storm. With Best is Steve Hawks, the operations manager at the marina.

The 140-by-95-foot dock came crashing down early Thursday under the weight of 3 inches of ice. Nineteen boats many of them 30- to 40-feet long were crumpled under the rubble.

Best said one of his sons was staying at the marina’s lodge room when the sound of the collapse woke him at 2 a.m. Thursday.

“He said it sounded like a bunch of shotguns going off when it was coming down,” Best said.

He estimated it would cost roughly a quarter of a million dollars to repair the dock. That doesn’t include damage to the boats.

The process of removing the ruins of the dock from atop the boats didn’t begin until Tuesday night, after Best heard from his insurance adjuster. Best said some of the boats were completely destroyed; a few others are salvageable.

He said it would take two or three months to get dock back in shape.

The dock will have to be cut loose from its moorings and slowly moved to a boat ramp area, where a crane will then lift the tin-and-reinforced-metal roof frame off the boats, Best said.

The dock that collapsed is the second largest of the marina’s 21 docks.

Best said that, in the 10 years he’d owned the marina, high winds or tornadoes had taken out docks on several occasions, but ice never had caused such significant damage.

“It’s one of those things that’s an act of God,” he said. “It’s a one-in-50-year type of event. We were fortunate that we didn’t have more docks go down because of the amount of weight that was on them.”