How private charters are priced
Unlike a shared tour (priced per person), a private charter is priced by the boat — you book the whole vessel for a set length of time, and the price is the same whether you bring two people or a dozen. That’s why charters get more cost-effective the bigger your group.
What affects the cost
- Length of the trip — a 2-hour cruise costs less than a half or full day
- Which boat — a larger boat or the tiki carries more and costs more
- Season & date — peak times and holidays book up first
- Add-ons — champagne, décor or a photographer
What’s included
Your boat, a local USCG captain, fuel, life jackets and the captain’s local knowledge and photos. It’s BYOB, so food and drinks are yours to bring. For exact, current pricing, see the live booking screen or call us.
From the Helm: Private charters and the falling-tide math behind your quote at Big Marco Pass
When someone calls to ask what a private charter runs, our captains usually answer with a question first: what's the tide doing that afternoon? A private booking means you're not locked to somebody else's departure slot, so the real conversation isn't just about the boat — it's about which window of water we can build your day around. Ask about an afternoon run out Big Marco Pass in winter and we're already thinking about the stretch of outgoing water when the pass settles down and the sandbars along its edges start breaking the surface.
That's the detail a price sheet can't capture. A shared tour runs on a fixed clock no matter what the Gulf is doing that day; a private booking lets our captains shift your start by half an hour to catch slack water at the pass mouth, or push it later so you're stepping onto a sandbar right as it clears. We build the route first, then match the timing to it — the sequence, the stops, and how long we linger at each one flexes around your group and the water, not a printed schedule.
Wind changes that math fast. A stiff southwest breeze can turn Big Marco Pass sloppy by midafternoon, and when that happens our captains will usually shift the run toward the lee side of Kice instead, where the water stays flat even when the outside chop kicks up. We'd rather trade one stop for a smoother ride than grind you through a rough pass to hold a plan drawn up that morning. That flexibility, more than any per-person math, is what you're actually paying for when you claim the whole boat.
Boat choice quietly shapes the same conversation. A small private group chasing skinny water off the pass often does better in a shallower center console than in the larger tri-toon most people picture when they hear "private charter." The smaller rig noses closer to a shoal edge without the grounding risk of a bigger hull on a dropping tide, which matters more once you're chasing a tide window instead of following a fixed loop.
Guests almost always ask the same follow-up once we're underway: could we have added an extra stop if we'd wanted one? Usually, yes — a private group has room to swap a wildlife pass for extra beach time, or trade twenty minutes at the dock for twenty more on a sandbar, right up until we've actually committed to a route. That's worth knowing before you call for a quote: you're not just buying a boat and a captain, you're buying room to change your mind once you're already out on the water.
If you're still weighing formats, our private charter vs. shared tour breakdown covers who a scheduled departure suits best. Either way, once you're aboard, the tide runs the day more than the clock does.