Visitors who step outside the recently opened Gaylord Pacific Resort and Convention Center on the Chula Vista bayfront are greeted by a sight you don’t often see at resort hotels.

Steps away from the hotel’s sparkling swimming pools and manicured grounds looms a row of ocean-going vessels hoisted out of San Diego Bay and perched atop repair platforms.

Hulking cranes the size of small skyscrapers rise above the boats. Workers, many dressed head to toe in protective gear, crawl around the ships, sanding hulls, riveting steel plates, painting, polishing and buffing.

The assemblage of boats includes superyachts owned by some of the world’s wealthiest people, top-secret military vessels and humble ferries to places like Catalina Island or Coronado.

They are lined up at a dry dock next door

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