How to Prepare Your Boat for a Delivery Captain
The checklist I send every owner before a delivery, and the one thing on it nobody can do but you. An afternoon of prep saves a billable day.
Every delivery starts the same way: I step aboard a boat I've never run, in a marina I may not know well, with a schedule already on the clock. How that morning goes is mostly decided before I arrive, by what the owner did or didn't do to prepare the boat for delivery.
That's why my delivery contract includes a readiness checklist the owner completes before I get there. It isn't bureaucracy. It's the difference between casting off at 8 a.m. and spending the first billable day chasing a dead battery and expired flares. This article is that checklist, expanded, with the reason behind each item. Work through it the week before your delivery and the trip starts the way it should.
Safety gear: the federal minimums, actually checked
The first section of the checklist is the equipment the USCG requires on recreational vessels. Most boats have all of it aboard somewhere. The checklist isn't about whether you own the gear. It's about whether it's findable, in date, and working.
Life jackets for everyone aboard, plus a throwable. Wearable PFDs for each person on the trip, accessible, not buried under fenders in a cockpit locker. One Type IV throwable that can actually be reached from the helm or cockpit.
Fire extinguishers. Check the pressure gauges and the expiration dates. Extinguishers age out quietly, and an expired bottle fails two ways: it may not work, and it doesn't count toward the requirement.
Visual distress signals. Flares carry expiration dates, and on a delivery we're often crossing water where they're legally required. Check the dates, not just the box they're in.
Sound signal and nav lights. Horn or whistle works, and every nav light comes on. I test lights even on a trip planned entirely for daylight, because weather has its own opinions about schedules.
Current charts. Paper or updated electronic coverage for the route. If your chartplotter's cartography hasn't been updated in years, say so. I'll bring my own coverage, but I want to know what the helm is showing me.
Mechanical readiness: what keeps the trip moving
The second section is the machinery, and it's where unready boats burn the most time.
Engines serviced within the last 50 hours. Oil, filters, coolant. A delivery puts more consecutive running hours on a boat than most owners do all month, and tired oil meets that workload badly.
Fuel topped off. Full tanks at departure simplify the first day's planning and tell me the fuel gauges' starting truth.
Bilge pumps tested. Every pump, every float switch, manually tripped. Not glanced at. Tripped.
Batteries charged and holding load. A battery that takes a charge but won't hold one announces itself at the worst possible time, usually at anchor or at a fuel dock with traffic waiting.
Ground tackle in working order. Anchor, rode, and windlass all operational. On a delivery the anchor is safety equipment first and convenience second; if something stops the engines mid-lake, it's what keeps the boat off the rocks while we sort it out.
TL;DR. The short version:
PFDs accessible and a throwable at hand, extinguishers and flares in date, horn and nav lights working, current charts. Engines serviced within 50 hours, fuel full, bilge pumps tripped and tested, batteries holding load, ground tackle operational. Registration aboard, insurance rider confirmed, keys and codes handed over.
Paperwork: aboard, not at home
Registration or documentation papers ride with the boat, not in your desk drawer. If we're boarded or clearing into a marina that asks, "it's at home" is not an answer. Confirm the insurance rider naming your captain is issued before departure day, not promised for sometime that week; I don't leave the dock without it. And hand over everything that opens or starts something: keys, fobs, helm lock codes, electronics passwords, the combination to the cabin door nobody remembers.
The part only you can do: tell me about her
A checklist covers what every boat needs. This section covers what only your boat needs, and it's the most valuable fifteen minutes of the whole preparation.
Every boat has knowledge that lives in the owner's head. The battery switch sequence that actually works. The port fuel gauge that reads a quarter-tank high. The bilge pump that cycles every twenty minutes and is fine, or the one that never runs and isn't. Which spare belts and filters are aboard and where they hide. The generator's cold-start ritual. The shore power cord with the temperamental end.
Walk the boat with your captain before departure and download all of it. If schedules mean we won't overlap, write it down: one page of honest notes about the boat's habits, taped to the helm, is worth more to me than any owner's manual aboard. The boat is going to tell me her secrets eventually. I'd rather hear them from you at the dock than from her in the middle of Saginaw Bay.
If she's not ready
Here's the plain version of what the contract says: if I arrive and the boat isn't ready or safe for the voyage, the daily rate begins while we put it right. That's not a penalty. It's just where the time goes, and the time is the bill. An afternoon of your prep work the week before is the cheapest line item on the whole delivery, because it's the one that costs nothing.
If a delivery is coming up and you want a second set of eyes on the boat before departure day, that's a conversation worth having. I'd always rather find the dead battery on Tuesday than on departure morning.
