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Offshore Captain Services Professional captain coaching, vessel deliveries, and expert guidance.

Whether you're on a 20-foot pontoon or a 65-foot sportfish, let's get you there confidently.

Every fall, somewhere between the Travelift and the shrink wrap, a boat gets two feet shorter.Nobody measures it. She co...
10/22/2026

Every fall, somewhere between the Travelift and the shrink wrap, a boat gets two feet shorter.

Nobody measures it. She comes out of the water, goes up on the stands between two bigger boats, and for the first time all year, she looks small.

By the time she’s wrapped, there’s a listing open on somebody’s phone at eleven at night.

By Thanksgiving, there are opinions about beam.

By the boat show, there’s a spreadsheet.

They call it two-foot-itis, and fall is when it’s contagious. There’s no cure. There’s only a bigger slip.

A lot of boats get moved as a favor. A favor doesn’t come with paperwork, and paperwork is what you want the day somethi...
10/21/2026

A lot of boats get moved as a favor. A favor doesn’t come with paperwork, and paperwork is what you want the day something goes sideways.

Here’s what a delivery should put in writing, start to finish.

Before anyone steps aboard: a written agreement that covers the route, the rate, the expenses, and what happens if the weather or the boat holds things up.

Before she leaves the dock: a readiness checklist for the boat, covering the safety gear, the mechanical condition and the documentation. And the captain’s credentials on file with your insurer, so the rider is in place before the lines come off.

While she’s underway: a float plan with someone ashore, and a check-in at the end of every day.

When she arrives: a trip log with the departure and arrival times, fuel burn, weather, anything that happened along the way and anything that needs attention. Plus an itemized list of expenses.

That log goes in the boat’s file. It’s part of her service history the day you go to sell her.

None of it is complicated. It’s the difference between a favor and a delivery.

How mine go are in the comments.

The number one reason I hear a starter click on splash day is a battery that read fine in October.It sat discharged all ...
10/20/2026

The number one reason I hear a starter click on splash day is a battery that read fine in October.

It sat discharged all winter. So before she’s wrapped: batteries charged, terminals clean, and either on a maintainer or pulled and stored somewhere warm, depending on what your yard allows and what your manual recommends.

While you’re at it, take one last walk through the boat. Once the shrink wrap goes on, the inside of her is hard to get to until spring.

Bilge dry. Seacocks set the way your yard wants them. Nothing aboard that shouldn’t spend a Michigan winter there. Registration and documentation off the boat and in a file at home, since you’ll need them for the spring renewal anyway.

And book the repair work now. Prop shops, canvas shops and diesel mechanics are quiet in January and slammed in April. A prop dropped off in November comes back polished and balanced, with a note. A prop dropped off in April gets a date in May.

The rest of the haul-out list is in the comments.

10/16/2026

We made the Frankfort fuel dock at 1715. At 1833, the storm we'd watched build all afternoon hit Frankfort with winds over 50 miles an hour. By 1900 it was calm again.

That hour was what the whole afternoon was about.

It was day two of a delivery back in June: Gratitude, a 58-foot Sea Ray, from Lake St. Clair around the top of Michigan to Holland. About 495 nautical miles in three running days.

That morning we'd run under the Mackinac Bridge in fog, sounding the horn every two minutes with other boats close by on radar. Day three was 4-foot seas on the bow down Lake Michigan, and one more storm that broke up just long enough for us to slip into Holland ahead of it.

Every one of those mornings started in the engine room. Anything we found, a little oil spatter, some belt dust, a bit of weepage at a transmission, went in the log with a photo. At the end, the owner got every log sheet, photo and video from all three days.

The boat got there, the weather was respected instead of fought, and the owner knows exactly how she ran. That's what a delivery is supposed to look like.

The whole trip, day by day, is in the comments.

Ask a captain if they’re licensed and you’ll hear yes. Yes is a claim, not an answer.The answer takes about two minutes,...
10/16/2026

Ask a captain if they’re licensed and you’ll hear yes. Yes is a claim, not an answer.

The answer takes about two minutes, from your kitchen table, before anyone steps aboard your boat.

Ask for the captain’s full legal name and Mariner Reference Number, in writing. A professional hands it over the first time you ask. Mine is 2913289.

Look it up. The Coast Guard’s National Maritime Center has a credential verification tool on its website. Put in the last name and the number, and it tells you whether the credential and the medical certificate are both valid.

Then read what the license is for. The tonnage has to cover your boat, and the route has to cover your trip. A Great Lakes and inland license, however good the captain, stops at the Coast Guard’s boundary line. If your run to Florida has an outside leg, the license needs near coastal on it.

If a captain hesitates at the first step, you don’t need the rest.

And no license tells you what they’ve run lately, whether they know your water or whether they can teach. You find those out on the first phone call.

The whole check, and what the endorsements mean, is in the comments.

Every marina has one.By the middle of October the fairways are emptying out. The Travelift has a waiting list. The fuel ...
10/14/2026

Every marina has one.

By the middle of October the fairways are emptying out. The Travelift has a waiting list. The fuel dock has new hours taped to the pump. The shrink-wrap crew is working its way down the rows in the yard.

And there’s one boat still in her slip, canvas up, fenders out.

Her owner has a fleece, a thermos and a lot of faith in the ten-day forecast. They were out last Saturday. They’ll be out this Saturday. When the harbormaster asks when she’s coming out, the answer is “after the weekend,” and it has been since Labor Day.

You know exactly who I mean.

Some of you are reading this from the cockpit.

The engine quit a quarter mile out of Gibraltar, on the first morning of a two-day coaching job.The boat was a 1999 Bayl...
10/13/2026

The engine quit a quarter mile out of Gibraltar, on the first morning of a two-day coaching job.

The boat was a 1999 Bayliner 2855 with a single sterndrive, and the owners wanted to get comfortable running her. That was the plan. The plan changed at about mile one.

We anchored north of Calf Island and went back into the engine room. My best guess, before anyone picked up a wrench, was old fuel with water in it from condensation. We called for a tow, got back to Gibraltar and pulled the fuel filter and water separator. It was heavily contaminated with water, with almost no gasoline smell left.

New filter, a fuel treatment and 60 gallons of fresh fuel. Then an hour of maneuvering drills inside the marina, close to the dock, in case the new filter clogged before we got clear. It held, so we went back out. Then she sputtered again, and after a second filter change we called it.

Not the day we drew up, but a better one than we’d have had without finding the fuel problem.

Day two was the tour. One owner took her up the Trenton Channel under both bridges and practiced docking at a restaurant. The other ran her up the Livingstone Channel and back, through the Sugar Island Cut and out into Lake Erie, then found the channel home to Gibraltar by a blue storage building and a cell tower over Humbug Marsh. Both of them put her back in her own slip.

Day one was troubleshooting. Day two was the tour. Both counted.

The whole write-up is in the comments.

On the Great Lakes, you usually have more water than the chart shows. In Florida, you can have less.It comes down to wha...
10/12/2026

On the Great Lakes, you usually have more water than the chart shows. In Florida, you can have less.

It comes down to what the chart measures from. Great Lakes depths are measured from low water datum, a level so low the water seldom falls below it. Most days the lake sits above it.

Florida charts measure from mean lower low water, an average of each day’s lowest tide. Actual tides can run lower than predicted, and on a big low tide with the wind blowing the water out, a spot that shows five feet on the chart can have a lot less in it.

Bridges work the same way from the other side. The clearance on the chart is measured from mean high water, which is also an average, so a big high tide leaves you less room than the chart says. If the bridge has a clearance gauge on the pier, read it on the way in.

None of this is hard. It just has to become a habit: check the tide before you leave the dock, before you anchor and before you go anywhere skinny. And load Florida charts with the tide and current stations on your plotter. Your Great Lakes chart card won’t have them.

I wrote up the rest of what changes when the boat goes south, from the current in the inlets to the manatee zones. Link’s in the comments.

The last run of the season is a working trip, not a victory lap.It’s the last time you’ll see the engines under load bef...
10/09/2026

The last run of the season is a working trip, not a victory lap.

It’s the last time you’ll see the engines under load before a mechanic sees them cold in April. So run her at cruise for a while and watch the gauges: oil pressure, temperatures, voltage, transmission temp if you have it. Anything that reads differently than it did in June goes in the log, with the number next to it.

Then work every system one more time. Windlass up and down. Trim tabs through their full travel. Flush every head and run water at every tap. Put the generator under load for twenty minutes. Anchor light, nav lights, horn.

You’re not testing them for the trip. You’re building the list of what doesn’t work, while there’s still time to get a tech aboard before she’s wrapped.

Bring a notebook, too. Hours on each engine and the genset, the fuel you added, and anything that squeaked, leaked or hesitated. You won’t remember any of it in April. Nobody does.

Your insurer said yes to the new boat. Then you got to the line that says you can't run her alone yet.Brokers call it a ...
10/08/2026

Your insurer said yes to the new boat. Then you got to the line that says you can't run her alone yet.

Brokers call it a captain's warranty. It usually comes with a big step up in size, when your experience doesn't match the boat you're insuring.

It comes in one of two forms. A check ride is an evaluation: a captain comes aboard, you run the boat, and they judge whether you can handle her. Supervised hours are a set amount of helm time with a captain aboard. Twenty and forty are common, and after a big jump some carriers ask for as many as a hundred. A boater safety course won't lift it. The underwriter wants time on this boat with a licensed captain.

I do this in Michigan and in Florida, on your own boat. Before we touch her, your underwriter gets my one-page credential submission, so the hours count from the first one. Then we run the time as coaching: your boat, your slip, whatever wind the day brings. You're paying for the hours either way, so you should come out of them able to run her, not just allowed to.

The sign-off letter comes when you're ready. If the hours run out before that, we keep working.

If your binder came back with a condition like this, call me before the first run. Bring the binder. I'll bring the form. 248.497.5791

Link's in the comments.

Address

21932 Thorofare Road
Grosse Ile, MI
48138

Telephone

+12484975791

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