The Captain's Hurricane Prep Guide 

Every May, like clockwork, someone posts the first tropical outlook map in a local Facebook group and everyone starts typing "sending prayers" in the comments. Meanwhile, half of us are sitting on boats that haven't had their lines inspected since last October.

Here in South Florida, we have this weird relationship with hurricane season. We've been through enough storms to stop panicking early. And that's exactly what gets people in trouble. You wait until the cone is tight on Broward County before you start scrambling, and suddenly you're tying off in 35-knot gusts trying to remember where you put your extra dock lines.

The whole game is doing the annoying prep work before you need to. When it's calm. When the hardware store isn't sold out of everything useful. Here's how to actually approach it, both for your home and your vessel.

Your House First (The Non-Dramatic Version)

You don't need a $300 emergency kit from Amazon. You need to think through what you'd actually want if the power was out for four days.

Food that doesn't require electricity to eat. Canned tuna, peanut butter, crackers, protein bars, stuff you'd grab without thinking. The novelty of camp cooking wears off fast. And for the love of everything: a manual can opener. This is the most common, dumbest oversight every single storm season.

Water. The guideline is a gallon per person per day. Stock up. And the day before a storm hits, scrub your bathtubs out and fill them all the way up. If city water fails or pressure drops, you can pour a bucket of tub water directly into your toilet bowl to flush it manually. That trick has saved more arguments than you'd think.

Power banks, charged. Every old portable charger you've got, from trade shows, from the junk drawer, plug them all in now. Once the power flickers, put your phone in low power mode and stop streaming video. You'll need that battery for real things.

The yard sweep. Anything that isn't bolted down becomes a projectile at 80 mph. Potted plants, lawn chairs, tiki torches, the grill, get it all into the garage. Propane tanks stay outside, turned off, chained to something solid. Don't bring those in.

Your Boat: A Phase-by-Phase Breakdown

This is the part that matters most to us, and where most of the bad decisions happen because people are improvising under pressure. Work through these in order before the storm is named and bearing down. It's not glamorous. None of this is.

Get your paperwork together first. Before you touch a single line or pull a single piece of canvas, spend twenty minutes on documentation. Pull your insurance policy and actually read the hurricane clause. Do you know what yours requires? A lot of policies have specific requirements around how the vessel is secured, and some go further than that, requiring the boat to actually be moved out of the storm's path, or at minimum proof that you made a real attempt to. If you skip that step and something goes wrong, that's exactly the kind of thing they'll use to deny your claim.

Here's the honest, born-and-raised-here take: if you're looking at a direct hit and you've got a few extra dollars, put the boat in a hurricane storage facility. Don't gamble on the dock holding. Vault Marine does exactly this, Category 5-rated indoor storage, and they'll do a hull out even after a storm is already in the cone. It costs money. Losing the boat costs more.

Photograph everything on the boat right now, while it looks normal. Hull, deck, electronics, every piece of gear you care about. Note your HIN somewhere you won't lose it, and while you're at it, get your other serial numbers together too. Do you actually know the serial numbers on your engines, your electronics? Take a few extra minutes and jot them all down, motors, electronics, anything with a tag on it, because if a storm doesn't get it, someone walking the marina after might. Put your title, registration, and insurance card with the rest of your important paperwork and take it with you. If the boat ends up three blocks away in someone's yard after the surge, you'll want all of that on hand.

Then strip it down. Wind doesn't care how well you tied your bimini down. If it can catch air, it's coming off, and it's either taking something with it or becoming a kite that lands on someone else's boat.

Get everything off the deck that can be removed: bimini, canvas, sails, antennas, outriggers, cushions, the dinghy. Anything you physically cannot remove, lash it down tight, boom, tiller, wheel. Close and lock every hatch and port. Tape over vents to stop water intrusion. Walk around when you're done and ask yourself: does this still look like a boat that's ready to fight a storm, or one that's hoping to get lucky?

Here's a shortcut worth knowing about before you get any further: if you want to skip the stress of the next two steps entirely, look into Vault Marine now, before you need them. They offer Category 5-rated dry storage and do hull outs even when the storm is already in the cone. Spots fill up fast once a system gets organized, so this is a call you want to make in June, not when the cone is pointed at Broward. It's just the easiest way to take the boat completely off the table as a worry.

If you're keeping it in the water, here's how to do it right.

Lines and Docking (If You're Leaving It in the Water)

Your everyday dock lines are not going to cut it. Here's what actually matters:

Double everything. Run crossing spring lines to manage surge. Use longer nylon lines. Nylon stretches, which absorbs the violent jerking that kills boats on pilings during storms. The line should have room to breathe with the water rise.

Fenders alone aren't enough. Install chafe protection at every single contact point where a line touches the boat or the dock. Ask yourself when you last actually checked your lines for wear, not just topped them off. A 12-hour storm will grind through an unprotected line. It's not a question of if, it's when.

If you have a cradle lift behind your house, raise it as high as it goes before the storm surge projections come out. Surge is the part that does the most damage and the least predictable.

Electrical and Mechanical

Charge your house batteries fully. Make sure your automatic bilge pump is actually working. Test it manually right now, not the night before the storm. Have a backup battery staged if you can.

Disconnect shore power completely. Turn off anything non-essential.

Tilt your outboards down vertically to protect the steering cylinders and brackets. Fill portable fuel tanks and store them ashore. If you want to go the extra step, close your fuel lines and cover the exhaust to keep water from flooding the motor. It sounds like overkill until you see an impeller soaked with saltwater that climbed up the exhaust.

Trailered Boats

If you can move it inland, do it. Get it well away from flood zones and surge paths. Position it near a solid wall or structure to block wind.

Block all four trailer wheels. Use heavy-duty tie-down straps anchored to the frame, not just the trailer hitch, secured to the ground. If you can hook it up to your truck as extra anchor weight, do that too.

Pull the drain plug. This one gets overlooked constantly. If the boat sits outside in heavy hurricane rain with the plug in, it fills up. A hull full of water can weigh thousands of pounds. That breaks trailer axles and collapses suspension. Pull the drain plug so the water goes through, not in.

The Part Nobody Talks About

Once your house is secure and your boat is handled, go check on your neighbors. Especially the ones who moved here from somewhere else and are looking at their first real storm season. Help someone move the heavy stuff. Lend the extra dock lines if you have them.

We've all seen what it looks like when a whole neighborhood is out cleaning up together the day after. That part is pretty good, actually.

Questions about your outboard before storm season hits? Give us a call at 954-946-1451 or reach out at support@compleatanglermarine.com. Better to get it checked now than after the storm.