What Not to Bring on a Boat Tour

Why a Small Boat Means a Short Do-Not-Bring List

A Sand Dollar charter isn’t a cruise ship. You’re stepping onto a boat built to run skinny water through the Ten Thousand Islands, and that means deck space is precious. Every bag, cooler and loose item you bring aboard has to fit somewhere that won’t slide, tip or block the path to the bow when it’s time to climb down onto a sandbar during a shelling tour at Kice Island. Add in the fact that you’re running through protected waters — seagrass beds, mangrove creeks and the same shell-rich flats your captain wants to show you — and the do-not-bring list gets short and specific fast. It isn’t about ruining your fun. It’s about keeping the deck clear, the footing safe and the water you’re about to explore in the same shape you found it.

Your captain will run through a quick safety briefing before you shove off, and part of that briefing is where things stow. Show up with more gear than the console lockers and under-seat bins can hold, and something ends up underfoot — and underfoot on a moving boat is exactly where you don’t want a cooler, a tackle box or a beach umbrella rolling around. Pack for a boat tour the way you’d pack for a day hike, not a beach vacation: only what you can carry in one hand and won’t mind getting a little salt spray on.

Glass Bottles, Jars & Anything That Can Shatter

Glass has no place on a small boat deck, full stop. A wine bottle, a glass water bottle, a jar of sunscreen or a glass tumbler is one wave wake away from becoming a hazard on fiberglass that a dozen bare feet are walking across. If it breaks belowdecks, in a cooler or on the swim platform, you’re looking at a real safety problem in the middle of open water — not an inconvenience you can just sweep up and forget. And if a shard goes over the side near a sandbar or a shelling flat, it stays there, in water where people wade barefoot for years to come.

Swap glass for anything that can’t shatter. Aluminum cans, hard plastic bottles and insulated stainless tumblers all do the same job without the risk. If you’re bringing a favorite drink for the ride, decant it into a reusable bottle before you leave the hotel room. It’s a five-second swap that keeps the whole boat — and the water around Kice Island — safer for everyone aboard and everyone who wades those flats after you.

Shoes That Don’t Belong on Deck

Leave the flip-flops with a loose strap, the leather boat shoes with a hard sole, and definitely the heels, at home. A boat deck gets wet the moment you leave the dock, and hard or slick soles turn a simple step down into a slip risk the second that fiberglass gets a film of spray on it. Flip-flops without a back strap are worse than no shoes at all — they’re usually the first thing to disappear off your foot when you’re climbing down onto a sandbar, and now you’ve got one bare foot and one shod foot picking through shell beds that can hide the odd sharp edge.

The safest bet on most Sand Dollar trips is bare feet or a pair of secure water sandals with a heel strap. For the full rundown on what actually works — and what to keep in your bag as a backup — our guide to boat tour shoes covers it in detail. The short version for what to skip: nothing hard-soled, nothing with a heel, and nothing that isn’t strapped to your foot.

Sunscreen and What It Does to the Water

Not all sunscreen is boat-friendly, and this is the item people are most surprised to hear about. Oil-based sunscreens loaded with oxybenzone and octinoxate rinse straight off your skin the moment you get in the water, and those chemicals settle right into the seagrass beds and shell flats around places like Kice and Keewaydin — the same habitat that keeps this ecosystem healthy enough to keep producing the shells you’re out here hunting for. Leave the oil-based spray cans at home.

Reef-safe, mineral-based sunscreen with zinc oxide or titanium dioxide as the active ingredient protects your skin without doing the same damage to the water. It’s thicker and takes a little more work to rub in, but it’s worth it. Pack it in a hard plastic or metal container rather than glass, put it on before you board rather than while you’re underway and the boat’s rocking, and reapply from a container small enough to actually stow. For the full sun-protection game plan — hats, sleeves, timing — see our post on how to avoid sunburn on a boat tour.

Valuables, Oversized Bags & Deck Clutter

A hard-sided rolling suitcase, a giant beach cooler built for a week at the condo, or a stack of dry bags for a family of six — none of it fits on a boat that’s designed to carry people, not luggage. Stowage on a Sand Dollar charter is limited to what fits in a console locker or under a bench seat, so oversized gear either gets left at the dock or ends up as a tripping hazard for the length of the trip. The same goes for loose cash, jewelry you’d hate to lose, and electronics without a case. There’s no lockable stateroom out here, and a phone or a ring that goes over the rail into the Gulf isn’t coming back.

Pack the way you would for a long walk on the beach: one soft-sided bag or a small drawstring pack that zips shut, a dry bag for your phone, and nothing you’d be devastated to lose overboard. If you’re weighing what actually earns a spot in that bag — water, snacks, a bag for your shell finds — our companion post on what to bring on a boat tour covers the full packing list. Between the two, you’ll walk down the dock with exactly what you need and nothing that’s going to get in the way.

Here’s the quick-reference version, side by side — and for more People-Also-Ask style answers like this one, browse the full Travel Guide.