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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 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.

The winter project list is the most optimistic document in boating.It gets written the first week she's on the stands, w...
10/07/2026

The winter project list is the most optimistic document in boating.

It gets written the first week she's on the stands, while the hull is still dripping. New canvas. Bottom paint. Rewire the nav lights properly this time. Fix the drawer that flies open every time you turn to port. Figure out what that one switch by the helm actually does.

By Thanksgiving it has a coffee ring on it.

In February it goes to the boat show and comes home four items longer.

In April it gets renamed the spring list. In May she goes back in with most of it still on there, and the drawer still flies open every time you turn to port.

Write the list anyway. Just use a pencil.

We made the Frankfort fuel dock at 1715. At 1833, the storm we'd watched build all afternoon hit Frankfort with winds ov...
10/06/2026

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.

I'm also working in Florida now, anywhere in the state.It's the same work I do from Lake Erie to Lake Huron: deliveries,...
10/06/2026

I'm also working in Florida now, anywhere in the state.

It's the same work I do from Lake Erie to Lake Huron: deliveries, lessons on your own boat, a captain for the day, insurance check rides and sea trials. Both coasts, the Keys, the Panhandle and the waterways in between. You don't bring the boat to me. I come to your dock.

If your boat spends summers up here and winters down there, that means one captain at both ends.

Once she's down there, the water changes more than the boat does. It rises and falls with the tide, it runs hard through the inlets one way and then the other, and the bridges open when they're ready. None of it is beyond a good Great Lakes boater. It's just new, and the best place to learn it is aboard your own boat.

If your boat is in Florida, or will be this winter, give me a call. 248.497.5791.

Link's in the comments.

The boat doesn't stop when the captain goes over the side.On a small runabout, a kill-switch lanyard shuts the engine do...
10/05/2026

The boat doesn't stop when the captain goes over the side.

On a small runabout, a kill-switch lanyard shuts the engine down. On most of the boats I work on, nothing does. She holds her speed until somebody pulls the throttles back, and if the autopilot is on, she holds her course too.

If you're the first mate, that somebody is you. Five things, in this order, in the first ten seconds:

Shout "Man overboard" and which side.

Throttles back, autopilot off. If they went in right beside the boat, turn toward their side. That swings the stern and the propellers away from them.

Throw something that floats, even if it'll land short. It's something to swim to, and it marks the spot.

Press the MOB button on the chartplotter.

Keep your eyes on them. If anyone else is aboard, their only job is to point and not stop.

Then come back slowly. Hurrying is how a recovery turns into a second accident. Nothing in gear once they're within a boat length, and don't go in after them. That's two people in cold water and nobody on the boat.

What makes those ten seconds automatic is a fender and a calm morning. The captain tosses it over without warning, the first mate runs the whole recovery, then you trade places. If your boat is still in, run it once before she comes out. If she's already on the stands, put it at the top of the spring list.

I wrote up the rest, including getting them back aboard, which is the hard part. Link's in the comments.

There is no state license to teach someone to handle their own boat. Anyone can put "instructor" on a business card.Some...
09/23/2026

There is no state license to teach someone to handle their own boat. Anyone can put "instructor" on a business card.

Some of the people who do are excellent. But it's worth knowing, because the gap between a boater safety certificate and actually running a 38-footer in a crosswind is exactly where new owners go looking for help, and more of that help is being sold through apps and marketplaces every season.

The certificate itself is a good thing. Michigan requires it for anyone born after June 30, 1996, and I tell every owner to take it whether the law requires it or not. It teaches the rules that apply to every boat in the state. It was never designed to teach the one they own: their slip, their propulsion, the current at their dock, the person on the bow with a line.

For brokers, agents, and anyone who refers a new owner to an instructor, four short questions sort it out.

Does this person hold a U.S. Coast Guard license, and what is their Mariner Reference Number?
Will they teach on the owner's boat, in the owner's slip, in whatever wind shows up?
Will the owner's carrier accept a sign-off letter from them? Confirm that with the carrier, not the instructor.
Will they work with the partner or crew, not just the person at the helm?

If the answers come back vague, that's a referral risk you're carrying too.

https://www.captainoffshore.com/from-the-helm/what-the-boater-safety-course-leaves-out

Address

21932 Thorofare Road
Grosse Ile, MI
48138

Telephone

+12484975791

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