Marine Recreation Editing and Proofreading Services

A family hires a boat for the day. The form they sign says they are competent and that they accept all risks. Nobody has asked what "competent" means to them, nobody has told them what the wind will do at three in the afternoon, and nobody has said what happens if they are not back by six. All three of those omissions cost the operator far more than the hire is worth when it goes wrong.

We edit what boat hire, sailing schools, marinas and marine recreation businesses produce — rental agreements and competence declarations, pre-departure briefings and checklists, area and hazard information for hirers, weather and cancellation policies, overdue and emergency procedures, course and instruction documentation, berth and mooring agreements, and the correspondence that follows an incident. Our editors work on documents used by people leaving the shore.

The rental agreement and its pre-departure briefing are one document doing two jobs, and their failure is a declaration of competence with nothing behind it. A signature saying somebody is competent proves nothing about whether they are. We work through these so competence is established by specific questions rather than by assertion — what they have handled, how recently, in what conditions, and whether they have anchored, taken a mooring or recovered a person — since these are answerable and "experienced" is not; so the operating limits are stated as conditions rather than as advice: the wind speed above which the boat must return, the area boundary shown on a chart the hirer keeps, and the time by which they must be alongside; so the hazards specific to this water are described with when they matter — the bar that breaks on an ebb, the ferry route, the shallow patch that is invisible at high water; so the overdue procedure is written with the time, the person and the actions, given that the value of the whole document is what happens when somebody does not come back; so the briefing is a checklist the hirer signs item by item rather than a paragraph, because a signature against one line is worth more than a signature under a page; so what to do if the engine stops is rehearsed in two sentences and the anchor is shown; so the fuel, kill cord, lifejacket and radio are demonstrated and recorded as demonstrated; and so the phone number that works is in their pocket, not on the wall. Documents written this way bring boats back.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including agreements, incident records and operational documents. We are editors rather than mariners, instructors or safety advisers, and we offer no view on seamanship, safety or any operational decision. What we can do is turn a declaration into a set of answers.