SavannahBoater.com

08/09/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/1CJP7t6XYY/

03/09/2026

Prop stopper dead head Daufuskie Island, South Carolina New River near County Dock 9/3 11:36 am.

30/08/2026

In case you missed it;

Here's a review of the rules concerning overtaking another vessel on the water--or crossing paths with one.

A picture is worth a thousand words... If you are overtaking, you are the give-way vessel. Always. Even if you are under sail. If y...

28/08/2026

While traveling on area ICW we've noticed that several beacons and buoys are missing. This might be related to the dredge folks departing the area. As the barge with the long runs of pipe trailing behind is pulled around bends in the waterway it hits some of them. So use caution while boating here and use your chart plotter. Of special note is the sandbar where Wall's Cut meets the New River otw to Daufuskie Island, South Carolina . The two ATONS that keep you off that bottom are missing. Another one missing just north of Causton's Bluff.

24/08/2026

After being in the area since April and dredging the ICW behind Daufuskie Island, South Carolina and near Thunderbolt the men and equipment are packing up and heading to the next job. Thank you for keeping our waterway navigable and safe travels to all of your crew...

17/08/2026

Messages from Brandon at Bull River Marina...

15/08/2026

Last weekend I managed to put some scratches on the cowl of our 300. Friend and local painter James Denmark did a quick and beautiful repair. He does a lot of work for a local boat club and other vessels at the Savannah Boathouse . DM for his #.

13/08/2026

With no charters for a few days we have time to consider how we operate. Are we doing things as best we can? Are we being as safe as possible? Is there room for improvement in our standard operating procedures? (SOPs)

Before I began this life as a merchant mariner I was a helicopter pilot for 30 years. 17 of the 30 were spent in the civil emergency medical service, flying sick and injured folks. We used to call that HEMS or helicopter emergency medical services, today they call it HAA for helicopter air ambulance. Notwithstanding the fact that HAA is hard to say, (Ha!) some industry bright light thought that if we took the word emergency out of what we called ourselves we would crash less often. I dunno.
So after seeing that lots of folks were dying in EMS helicopter crashes I did what any rational person would do, I tried to stop crashes from happening.
Not sure if it is a good thing or a bad thing but that do-gooder mentality followed me into charter boating.
One of my safety tricks BITD was the O-Crap or objective continuous risk assessment process. In case you aren't familiar with the art and science of controlling risk it starts with an assessment. Risk falls into two buckets; first--how likely is it that an event will occur? Second--if the event does occur how bad will it hurt? (probability and severity).
If something is probably going to happen then we must make sure it will not hurt. If an event will severely hurt (or kill) us then we must make sure it does not happen.
In case you think that folks don't get killed while boating I will point out that I personally trained a family on safe boating procedures and several members of that family died in a boat crash. Thinking about risk, and devising ways to control it is time well spent. Hence the O-crap thought process.
Ask yourself, "what is the proximate risk to us right this instant and how can I control it?"

17/07/2026

Prop stopper New River vicinity of Daufuskie Island County Dock.