Boatyard: How To Ship Your Boat Along the Coast
Move It or Lose It
A fork in the road can create a problem for boat owners.
You’ve come to a fork in the road of life and you want to take it. You’re ready to relocate to a new city, or even another country. Or you just want to explore new cruising grounds in another part of the world. Whatever your reason, moving your boat hundreds, maybe thousands of miles can be a challenge. What’s the best way to get the old ark to its new home?
Option number one, and the most fun and challenging, is to drive it there yourself. Fill the tanks with fuel, the galley with food, your pockets with cash and the cabin with boon companions, then fire up the engines and steer towards your new life. Make an adventure out of it. You’ll collect enough stories to bore your friends for years, you’ll be a more skillful skipper than when you left, and you’ll find all your boat’s shortcomings, which will give you a better idea of what to look for in your next one. Heck, you might find a place halfway through the voyage that you like so much you decide to stay there. It’s happened plenty of times before.
Sounds great, but unfortunately it’s not always possible: Maybe there’s a continent in the way, or an ocean, or your boat’s not set up for cruising—-center consoles are fine day boats, but do you want to live aboard one for a couple of weeks? Or, like most people, maybe you just don’t have the time for an extended cruise/delivery thanks to annoyances like having a job. In that case, you need option number two: Use a professional. You can hire a captain who will pilot your boat on its own bottom, find an over-the-road trucker who specializes in moving boats on a trailer or flatbed, or load your boat onto the deck of a ship to carry it across an ocean. If you’re rich, in a hurry, and your boat’s not too big, you can even ship it by air, aboard a monster cargo plane.
So You’re a Captain?
If you can’t move your boat yourself, who should you hire to do it for you, a captain or a truck driver? Frequently, circumstances decide. Following the Intracoastal Waterway to Florida is an easy cruise, and there are lots of captains who claim ICW expertise. Most boats make that voyage on their own bottoms. On the other hand, moving your boat from the East Coast to sunny California or rainy Washington state is a truck job if the boat will fit on a lowboy flatbed. Otherwise, it’s a long haul down the Atlantic Coast, through the Caribbean and the Panama Canal, then north past Central America and Mexico—an arduous, costly trip. It’s much faster and less expensive by road.
On-the-water deliveries can be unpredictable. Bad weather, equipment breakdowns, crew problems, run-ins with waterlogged tree trunks or uncharted spoil banks, and so forth can turn what should be an easy voyage into an ordeal. Professional captains and crews are paid by the day, so since you never know how long the trip will take, you can’t predict how much it will cost. (The daily rate for a captain and one crew varies based on the boat and the trip, but is generally $700 to $800.) More days underway also mean more food for the crew (there’s a fixed daily charge per crew member-—figure $50) and more nights in a marina. Some delivery captains lean on the throttles, which burns more fuel without shortening the trip enough to make up for the added expense; it usually just reduces the time underway each day. Whatever you estimated the trip would cost, add at least 50 percent, just so your cruising kitty doesn’t run out of milk.
Some delivery captains, however, are brilliant. An experienced, skillful skipper can minimize costs by not breaking things, not hitting things and not getting too throttle-happy. They can troubleshoot and repair systems themselves, even if only jury-rigging them to get the boat to its destination without costly boatyard intervention. They will be your agent in dealing with the yard if necessary. A pro will do their best to keep the trip on schedule, to control expenses and to deliver the boat in as good a shape as when they took command. They will bring a skilled crew with them, and not rely on dockside pick-ups or folks looking to make the trip “for the experience.” You should actually hire this person full-time.
How do you find a good captain? An internet search will turn up dozens of them, -but understand that no industry has as many bulls**t artists as boating, where everybody’s a “captain” and nobody ever admits to whacking a dock now and then. Having a USCG license in itself means very little, although almost every expert captain has one. Find a pro with certifiable experience aboard boats like yours and on the route your boat will take. Just because someone has sailed across the Atlantic a dozen times doesn’t mean he/she can navigate the ICW without incident. Demand many references and check every one; do an in-depth search on the internet; become a detective and see what you can dig up before turning any “captain” loose with your boat. He or she will be doing the same, mostly to ensure you’ll pay the bill when the boat’s delivered.
Talk to your insurance company. Ensure your boat’s fully covered for the delivery, and discover what, if any, requirements the captain must meet—particularly if they’re headed overseas. Confirm that your policy extends to the new cruising grounds, especially if you’re moving into hurricane territory. Professional captains rarely have insurance that covers the boats they deliver—that’s up to the boat owner—but the smart ones have professional liability coverage, primarily to protect them against being sued by the boat owner for damage en route. Understand the situation before sending your boat off with a delivery captain at the helm.
One If by Land
Trucking or trailering your boat to its new home port is a different kettle of fish. The ease or complexity of the trip depends mostly on the size of the load, which is not exactly the same as the size of the boat. Load widths over 8’6” are considered wide loads in most states, and require a special permit. (Narrower boats can usually be transported on a road-worthy boat trailer.) Over 12-foot width in most states requires not only a special permit, but at least one escort car, and restrictions on when the load can be moved. There’s also a maximum overall length for the truck, trailer and boat, which varies by state, too. In Florida, for example, it’s 75 feet; in Connecticut, one of the most restrictive states for truckers, it’s 65 feet. Any longer and it will need a permit.
The maximum load height without needing yet another permit is usually 13’6”. That’s not the height of the boat, but the height of the load from the ground; figure 18” or so for the height of the lowboy flatbed. The trucker will insist you make every effort to get the boat/trailer combo below 13’6”—any higher makes the job a lot more complex. Expect to remove arches, masts, radars, maybe even the whole flying bridge to get under this limit; usually the bridge is lashed down on the deck of the boat. Over 13’6” means more escorts, more travel restrictions, more complexity and more expense. Again, each state has its own regulations. The good news for you is you don’t have to worry about this: The trucker will work it out. You just have to pay, usually a per-mile rate, and wait for the call saying your boat’s at its new home.
Once the boat’s on the flatbed, the trucker is responsible for it until it’s offloaded at the other end. However, you’re responsible for getting the boat ready to ship, for securing all the gear below and on-deck and for loading it onto the trailer. You’ll need a Travelift or crane to help with this, and one at the other end to get the boat off the trailer. Your new boatyard will re-install the flying bridge and whatever else you removed to get the boat under-height. When estimating the cost of shipping, take the yard charges at each end into account. Even so, you’ll probably find it’s cheaper to ship your boat by truck than on its own bottom: You’re not paying for fuel, crew, dockage or breakdowns, and so forth. Crunch your own numbers, but don’t be surprised if the truck wins out.
Research your boat transporter as carefully as you would a delivery captain. There are several companies that move boats all over the country; an internet search will get you started. I think it’s easier to find a qualified trucker than to find a qualified delivery skipper. Driving a big rig with an oversize boat in tow isn’t a job for amateurs, and the DOT regulations are enforced by states to prevent yahoos from climbing behind the wheel.
Two If By Sea
If you need to move your boat across an ocean, your best bet is to load it aboard a ship. Transporting a boat as cargo isn’t much different from moving it on a flatbed, at least as far as the boat owner is concerned. The ship’s crew plucks the boat out of the water with a crane, or maybe floats it aboard a semi-submersible vessel, secures it and carries it to another port where it’s offloaded. Smaller boats can be carried in shipping containers or rolled aboard on trailers and stowed belowdecks. Once the owner turns the boat over to the ship’s crew, it’s their responsibility. The owner pays the bill. Cost? If you have to ask…. But it’s less risky, less hassle, faster, safer and probably less costly than driving your motoryacht or long-range trawler across an ocean—and you don’t have to hire a captain and crew with bluewater experience.
Size is not a problem when shipping a yacht—megayachts are the stock-in-trade of dedicated yacht-transport companies. There’s no need to unrig deck structures, remove flying bridges, etc., and your boat is ready to go once offloaded at the destination. In fact, someone has to be there to receive the boat as it comes off the ship. The crane drops it into the water, or the semi-submersible is flooded and the yacht floats off and is motored away. What could be easier?
The downside of ship-borne transport is this: Ships leave from only certain ports, so you have to move your boat to the ship. For example, many yacht transports traveling to the Mediterranean and northern Europe depart from Port Everglades, Florida, as do some heading for the Caribbean and even more distant destinations. At the other end, you have to deliver the boat to its final port, too—so you end up with a yacht delivery at each end of the voyage, unless you happen to live in a large port town such as Ft. Lauderdale and you’re moving to Genoa, Italy, or Palma de Mallorca, Spain. But that’s what it is: Transporting a boat across the ocean is a major operation that involves complicated logistics. It demands planning well in advance, consultation with your insurer, and maybe hiring a captain to move your boat to the ship—and another one to take it away, if you can’t fly there yourself.
It’s complex. Maybe you want to rethink moving—leave the fork in the road for someone else to step on—and stay where you are. It’s a lot easier, cheaper and less stressful. You could, after all, use the savings to spend more time and money doing something like, I don’t know, maybe boating.
This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
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