Fort Lauderdale by Yacht: You Choose the Captain
The whole boat is yours for two, four, or six hours, and up to twelve people come with it. What the price does not carry is a captain. Under the bareboat agreement you sign, you pick one from the operator's own list and pay that person directly, and that single line changes how the day adds up.
Most boat listings in Fort Lauderdale hand you a ticket. This one hands you a charter agreement.
The boat is a Sea Ray Sundancer 40, registered FL 5951 TJ, and when you book it the whole thing is yours for two, four, or six hours. Twelve people is the ceiling. Fuel is in the price, along with the cooler, the ice, the bottled water, and the landing and facility fees. Below deck there is a cabin with a proper head. On deck there is a Bluetooth stereo and enough seating that nobody spends six hours perched on a cushion edge.
The captain sits outside the price, and you hire that person yourself.
That is the legal shape of this charter, and it pays to understand it before you book.
The cabin earns its keep faster than you would think. It holds the head, it holds the shade, and it is where a kid goes when the sun stops being fun. The operator's own page for this boat also throws in a floating water mat, which appears nowhere in the listing's inclusions.
What you carry aboard is mostly up to you. The company is relaxed about food and drink coming on, and asks only that the boat goes back the way it arrived. Its own guidance puts a 50 dollar cleaning fee on a boat returned in a different state.
Fishing gear stays at the marina. So do wakeboards, kneeboards, tubes, and skis, because the company's insurance does not cover towed watersports.
Fort Lauderdale Private Yacht Tour & Swim: 40-Ft, Up to 12 pplPrivate 40-foot Sundancer out of Bahia Mar for two, four or six hours, up to twelve aboard. Fuel, cooler, ice and water included. Captain hired and paid separately.www.viator.comA List of Captains Arrives Before You Do
Here is how the operator describes the arrangement. The boat is chartered to you on a bareboat basis, which means the company hands over the vessel and you take on the job of crewing it. Two or three days before your date, an email brings the Bareboat Charter Agreement and the captain selection. The company names two captains it recommends and passes along their contact details. You call one. You hire them. You can also put forward a captain of your own, as long as the company approves the person and that person knows this particular boat.
You pay the captain directly at the dock, 50 dollars an hour, on top of everything you already paid.
The listing carries the same arithmetic in its exclusions: 100 dollars on a two-hour charter, 200 on a four, 300 on a six. Holiday rates can move.
Do not let that email sit. If the captain selection never gets completed, the operator says the charter can be cancelled with no refund, or left standing to the start time with no captain on the dock, which comes to the same thing.
One caveat the operator writes down itself. When a trip runs as an uninspected passenger vessel, the company assigns a licensed captain and there is nothing for you to pick. The listing for this boat says you will be selecting, so plan on selecting.
Whoever made the reservation has to be aboard and has to sign. The operator puts the signing age at 18. Every guest signs a waiver as well, and it arrives by email, so clear it before anyone drives to the marina.
The Ocean Is Right There, and You Are Not Going
Fort Lauderdale sells itself on the Atlantic. This charter stays behind it.
The company publishes its own limits for Fort Lauderdale: Oakland Park Boulevard at the north end, a line down on A1A at the south. No offshore running at all, because the company's insurance does not follow the boat past those lines. What that leaves is the Intracoastal, which is where the waterfront mansions, the working marinas, the drawbridges and the parked mega-yachts actually are. It is the better view anyway.
Swimming is the part to read slowly. The listing is titled as a tour and a swim, and the operator does run sandbar trips with a floating mat. The wording on this charter is conditional. The sandbar stop belongs to the longer bookings, and only when time and weather allow. If getting in the water is the point of your day, book four hours or six.
On its Fort Lauderdale sandbar trips the operator says it will move to a quieter spot when the main sandbar is crowded.
Rain Is Not a Cancellation Until the Captain Says So
The operator is blunt about this, and it is the most useful paragraph on its site.
Weather here is unpredictable, so the company does not work off forecasts. It asks everyone to arrive at the marina at the scheduled time unless the company has been in touch first. A screenshot of a weather app does not count. Cloudy skies do not count. If it is raining when you arrive, the crew waits up to 20 minutes past your start time to see whether it clears.
What follows those 20 minutes depends on what you selected at checkout. The company sells an optional trip protection add-on through its own booking flow, and its own policy puts the cutoff at 24 hours before the start time. That policy is written for bookings made with the operator directly. Nothing on this reservation says whether the add-on can be attached to it, so ask the operator before you count on it.
The booking itself cancels free up to 24 hours ahead. Inside 24 hours there is no refund.
One line the operator repeats in several places: walking away from the marina without hearing from the company, or declining to go once the captain has judged conditions safe, gets handled as a no-show.
A Baby Counts as One of the Twelve
The operator counts heads, not adults. Its own FAQ puts it plainly: every person counts as a passenger whatever their age, so a child is one of them. Twelve means twelve, and a family of five plus seven friends is already a full boat.
Children are welcome on board. The company keeps life jackets for small ones and asks for notice when more than two children are coming, so it can have the right sizes waiting. Anyone aged six or under has to wear one the whole time the boat is moving.
A few other things the operator sets out:
- Service dogs are welcome. The company's terms say it asks only what the dog is trained to do and does not require papers, though its FAQ page still mentions a certificate. Emotional support animals and pets stay ashore
- The boats are a drug-free zone, and a rental gets terminated on the spot
- Light decorations are welcome, though confetti and balloon arrangements over ten balloons are not
- Fishing gear and towed watersports gear stay ashore
Weekends fill. The company suggests reserving about a week ahead once you know which weekend day you want.
📍 The meeting point is Dock B at Bahia Mar, 801 Seabreeze Boulevard, on the barrier island between the beach and the Intracoastal. The operator asks you to wait outside the dock and meet your captain there, because guests are not meant to walk in alone.
Departures run at 10:00 am, 12:30 pm, 3:00 pm, 5:30 pm and 8:00 pm. The six-hour charter uses the first three. The four-hour adds the 5:30. The 8:00 pm slot belongs to the two-hour charter alone, and on that two-hour run the first and last departures price below the three in the middle.
Which is a quiet argument for taking the eight o'clock, when the dock lights come on under the hull and the Intracoastal goes quiet.