Yacht management in Miami.
Weekly visits, our own technicians, named storm plans.
Biscayne Bay, the Miami Beach marinas and the downtown basins, worked by the same crews and to the same schedule as Fort Lauderdale.
Here the boat lives in a marina, behind somebody else's gate.
Miami boats live a harder life than the brochures suggest: more sun on the brightwork, more salt in the systems, and owners who fly in for a weekend and expect the boat to be ready the moment they arrive.
Dockage in Miami usually means a slip in a marina rather than a seawall behind a house. There is a dockmaster, there is a gate, and most marinas keep a vendor list and want a certificate of insurance on file before anybody touches a boat at their docks. Somebody has to keep that current, and it should not be the owner, from another time zone, on the morning of a haul out.
The basin sets the rest of the job. An open slip on Biscayne Bay takes wind across the water and wake off a bay that is busy every weekend, so lines, fenders and chafe gear are looked at on every visit rather than at the end of the season. Growth is the same story: the bottom, the sea strainers and the raw water side of the air conditioning never get an off month here.
A management program here is mostly about the fortnight you are not present. That is when the visits happen, when the photographs are taken, and when the small failures get found while they are still small.
The program is mostly about the weeks nobody is aboard.
One coordinator who knows your boat and one invoice, and the visits happen whether or not you are in Florida. All the services that run under a program are set out on the yacht management page.
- Every week, on a date
- A wash down, a walk of the systems, tank levels read and photographs taken. Weekly is the interval because an open slip gives the boat nothing to hide behind: salt spray, sun and rain spotting land on it every day of the week you are not here.
- Every engine started, every generator run
- Engines and generators started, seacocks exercised, sea strainers cleaned, the main panel checked. A boat used four weekends a year is a boat that mostly sits, and sitting is what costs money later.
- The dockmaster is our conversation
- Most marinas here keep a vendor list and want a certificate of insurance on file before anyone works on a boat at their docks. Keeping that current is part of the program, and it is a call we would rather take than have you take.
- Sun handled on a set cycle
- A weekly wash paired with a longer polish or coating cycle two to four times a year, with brightwork and canvas checked at each visit. Gelcoat that has gone dull comes back by compounding, which is the expensive way to learn the schedule.
- A captain who knows the bay
- Trips are run by captains from the same network of about two hundred captains and crew, insurance verified and background checked. Biscayne Bay is shallow outside the marked channels, so running gear that touched bottom gets inspected and repaired properly.
- Written down the same day
- Photographs, tank levels and service dates land in Mariner Pro after each visit, beside the insurance certificate and the hurricane plan with their expiry dates against them.
Most of it gets fixed in the slip.
Repairs and upgrades, carried out by our own technicians. In Miami that is a practical difference rather than a marketing one: a gated marina, a haul out that means a yard booking and a run up the river, and an owner who is not here to let anyone in. Air conditioning, pumps, hydraulics and electrical get diagnosed and repaired at the dock, and the boat comes out of the water when the work genuinely requires it.
Warm bay water is hardest on the raw water side of an air conditioning system. That's why ElectroSea pump and strainer installation is one of the upgrade lines we fit ourselves.
The weekend starts before you land.
Owners here fly in for a weekend more often than they settle in for a month, and that puts the whole burden on timing. The interior turned over and the laundry done before you arrive. A captain scheduled if you want one. Dockage arranged at the other end if you are staying out a night. None of it is a favor asked on Thursday, because it is already on the calendar.
You can also see the state of the boat before you get on the plane. Tank levels, the week's photographs and anything the crew flagged are in Mariner Pro, entered by the people who were standing on the deck.
The marina may decide when the boat leaves.
Hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30, and most carriers will not let you change a named storm plan once a storm has a name, so the plan is written and the location contracted in February. Marinas add a clock of their own: many slip agreements require a vessel to be prepared or removed inside a window that opens the moment a watch is posted, and that window does not wait for a flight.
Moving a boat out of Biscayne Bay against that clock is a scheduling problem before it is a seamanship one, because every other owner in the basin is calling the same yards on the same morning. We source the plan, our own captains run the delivery, and the plan and the insurance certificate sit together in the app with their expiry dates against them. For an owner who is not in Florida in September, this is the part of the program that matters most.
The people behind a Miami program, in numbers.
Call, and we will meet you at the slip.
754-260-7773We will walk the vessel with you in Miami and write down what it needs. Then we'll talk through what a program would actually cover.
The same crews and the same schedule in Fort Lauderdale, Miami Beach and Palm Beach.