Your guide to Martha’s Vineyard boat charters
A list of who runs boats off this island, what they charge, and their phone numbers. That is the whole thing.
We tell you who to call
This started because working out who to call here is harder than it should be. The good captains are one-boat operations with a website from 2011 and a voicemail that fills up in August, and the sites that rank above them are aggregators that will happily take a cut for forwarding your email. So: a list, kept current, with the numbers on it. You call them. Operators pay us nothing, and we add nothing to their price. Where a booking site pays us a commission, we say so on that page.
Four harbors
On our list, charters leave from Edgartown, Oak Bluffs and Vineyard Haven in about equal numbers, and the fishing boats also work out of Menemsha. Edgartown is the one people picture: the white captains’ houses, the little lighthouse at the end of the harbor, the Chappy ferry crossing every few minutes on a chain.
From the Edgartown slip you are twenty minutes from Cape Poge, half an hour from the rips, and an hour or so from the Elizabeths on a decent day.
Who is on it
The main list is everyone we have called and checked, small one-boat outfits included. A second list holds the ones we have found but not yet spoken to. Some captains we haven’t tracked down at all, and when we do, they go on.
When a boat is sold or an outfit stops running for the season, it comes off.
Which trip is worth it
Which coves are sheltered in a northeast wind. Where the stripers hold in July. Which sunset route actually goes somewhere and which one loops the harbor for ninety minutes.
Ask and we will tell you, including when the honest answer is that the trip you have in mind isn’t worth what it costs.
What we do and don’t do
We will talk you out of it
Sometimes the answer is the cheaper boat, or a Tuesday instead of a Saturday, or don’t bother. We have no reason to tell you otherwise.
Three things, checked
Current USCG license, stated capacity, working contact details. We verify those three things. We have not inspected anybody’s hull or read their insurance, and we are not going to pretend we have.
When to go
When the fish move, when the harbor empties out, which week in August is the worst one to try to book anything.
The price is the price
You pay the operator their price. Nothing is added on our side, and we have nothing of our own to sell you instead.
A person reads it
One person reads what comes in. We won’t promise how fast. If your dates are close, call an operator from the list instead; you will often have an answer the same afternoon.
No boat of our own
We have no boats, captains or calendar of our own, so there are no empty slots we need you to fill.
Tell us the date and how many
The date and the headcount will do. If we know somebody who fits, we will say so; if we don’t, we will say that too.
Write to us