Food & drinks (it’s BYOB)
The tiki is BYOB, so pack a cooler with whatever your group likes — drinks, snacks or a full spread. Cans are preferred over glass for safety, and we’ll have ice and a cooler spot ready. Families, bring the kids’ juice and snacks too.
Sun & comfort
- Sunscreen — even with the thatched shade, you’ll want it
- Sunglasses & a hat
- A light layer for a sunset or evening cruise
- Flat, non-slip shoes or sandals (many go barefoot aboard)
The fun stuff
Bring your playlist (it’s your boat — set the soundtrack), your phone or camera for photos, and any décor if you’re celebrating a birthday or occasion. Towels and swimsuits are smart if you’d like a sandbar swim stop.
From the Helm: Tucking into Goodland’s calm channel when the cooler matters most
Someone always asks, cooler already open at the dock, whether the ride out is going to be smooth enough to actually enjoy a drink instead of hanging onto it. On an afternoon with a stiff onshore breeze stacking chop on open water, our answer is to tuck the route through Goodland’s calm channel instead of running straight out into it, trading a few extra minutes for water flat enough that nobody’s bracing against the rail with a full cup in hand.
The one packing detail we’d add to the standard BYOB list is insulated tumblers over anything glass or breakable — not because glass is banned outright, but because a rocking boat and bare feet don’t mix well with anything that shatters. A soft-sided cooler with a shoulder strap also beats a hard one on this route, since it’s easier to brace against your hip crossing the short stretch of open water before we duck back into calmer channel again.
Ice is the thing people underestimate most. A block of it lasts noticeably longer than loose cubes in Florida heat, and packing the cooler solid — drinks first, ice poured in around them rather than dumped on top — keeps everything cold for the whole run instead of half-melted by the second stop. That packing order is what keeps a cooler icy clear through sunset instead of lukewarm by the halfway mark.
Once we’re tucked into the channel and the wake drops off, the boat settles into a gentle rock instead of a chop, and that’s usually when the music goes up and people actually stand up to dance instead of gripping a handrail. We’ll hold that calmer line as long as the route allows, saving the open-water stretch for the calmest window of the afternoon rather than running it first just to get it over with.
On a stronger blow, even Goodland’s channel can pick up a chop of its own, and on those afternoons we’ll shift again to hug the mangrove shoreline further in, trading a slightly longer ride for water flat enough that the only motion anyone feels is the boat’s own wake bouncing softly back off the bank. That extra hug of the bank costs almost nothing in ride time, but it’s why the cooler stays put on the deck instead of skating across it on the next broadside gust.
A tiki cruise built around calm water rather than a fixed route is really the whole idea behind our tiki boat tours, and if you want a broader sense of the calmer channels we lean on for afternoons like this, our destinations guide covers Goodland and the water around it.