A Power Boater's Rules of the Road

You've felt it — two boats closing on the same patch of water on the ICW, nobody sure who's supposed to move, both captains waiting to see how the other reacts. That half-second of doubt is exactly what the Rules of the Road were written to erase.

Here's the first thing to unlearn: out here, nobody truly owns the “right of way.” Every meeting has two roles — a stand-on vessel that holds course and speed, and a give-way vessel that acts early and wide. Power boat to power boat, it comes down to three situations: meet head-on and you both turn to starboard, passing port to port; in a crossing, the boat on your starboard side is stand-on and you give way; and the boat overtaking from behind always keeps clear. Add other vessel types and power boats sit near the bottom of the ladder — you yield to sailboats, to boats fishing with gear out, and to anyone not under command. But the rule that beats every diagram is simple: the Rules never give anyone the right to cause a collision. Give way early, make it obvious, and remember — being right doesn't buff out fiberglass.

The full breakdown — the sound signals, the vessel pecking order, and where to take a class (including the last USCG Auxiliary course of the season in Daphne on August 15, and The Captain's School in Gulf Shores) — is on Docklines.

If you've ever idled where the Intracoastal meets Mobile Bay and wondered where to go, whether there's enough water to get there, and whether there's a cleat to tie to on the other side, that question is the reason Dockside Guide exists. We point you to the local spots you can pull your boat right up to — the restaurants, the marinas, the working-waterfront places you'd never find from the road — and we hand you the real numbers to get there: approach depths, docking, what to order once your lines are tied.

This week on Docklines we're getting into the why of it — where the guide came from, the community we're building, and why the guide is free for boaters. And we're putting one of the Field Guides in your hands: Field Guide Volume One — Six Restaurants Worth Docking the Boat For (plus a lagniappe bonus we couldn't leave out). From The Tin Top on the Bon Secour, to Zeke's on Cotton Bayou, to a longer run out to The Oar House on Bayou Chico — every stop is captain-tested, with a full Captain's Log for the approach. Read the story, then download the guide and pencil one stop into this weekend's float plan.

The boats never left the lift last Saturday afternoon. That’s not how these things usually go for me — most Saturdays have a run in them somewhere. But this one was different by design. It was a day for family and friends, in the kitchen, on the porch, and eventually out at a neighbor’s dock in the Town of Perdido Beach.

One of Summer's Biggest Weekends: Which Way Do You Point the Bow?

One weekend, and the whole coast is running hot at once — the granddaddy fishing rodeo weighing in on Dauphin Island, the Blue Angels over Pensacola Beach, marlin coming up the crane at the Wharf, and Parker McCollum and the Coral Reefer Band under the lights. Five events, three bodies of water, and no way to be everywhere.

So we ran the numbers and made the call on where to point the bow — including the one you ought to do by boat.

Forty-Three Rules that Separate Boat Captains from Being "That Guy"

Somewhere out there right now, a fellow is untying his straps on the ramp with fifteen boats stacked up behind him — and another is planing wide open straight through the anchorage like the no-wake sign is a suggestion. We've all seen that guy. Nobody wants to be that guy. So we wrote down the rules that keep our stretch of water friendly, safe, and worth coming back to — 43 of them, from ramp prep and wake responsibility to sandbar etiquette, radio manners, and why you tip the dockhand.

Some are law, some are just good seamanship, and a few will make you laugh because you know exactly who they're about. Read all 43 and see how many you already live by. 

The Longest Day: Seven Weekends Until the Buses Run

The sun came up over Perdido Pass this week and stayed up longer than it will any other day all year. Most folks read the solstice as the start of something. I read it as a clock.

Here's what nobody tells you in June: summer with the kids out of school is a whole lot shorter than summer itself. Count it on your fingers — by the time the Baldwin County buses roll again in August, you've got about seven weekends. Seven.

So this week's Docklines isn't a kick-back-and-drift letter. It's a plan: how to read the water before you load the cooler, put the kids on the tube, snorkel the reefs right off the beach, find the bite, raft up at the newly restored Perdido Islands — and the new rules you'll want to know before you idle in — then wash the salt off and let somebody else cook.

The light's as long as it's going to be, starting today. Be the family that's already loaded and gone.

It's a beautiful weekend on the Lower Alabama coast, and next Sunday is Father's Day. You know the old line — make hay while the sun shines. On the water, that means you get on the boat when the chance shows up, because weather like we've got right now doesn't sit around and wait on you. So here's my pitch to the families reading this: find a way to turn Dad loose this weekend, or during the week, or anytime before next Sunday. Give him a morning to himself out on the water, then circle back and make the rest of the day a family thing. That's the whole trick to a good Father's Day down here.

The Raft-Up, the Regatta, and the Sandbar

It's a big weekend on the water. Saturday, the Children's Cup Regatta sails out of Fairhope Yacht Club; Sunday, the Drop Anchor Song Fest drops anchor off the Montrose Crescent. Two good reasons to put the boat in — and both of them mean a lot of hulls anchored close together for a good cause. The part nobody hands you on the way out of the marina? The unwritten rules that keep a crowded anchorage from turning into a bad afternoon.

So we wrote them down. Our full guide breaks down how to set a raft-up so the whole thing actually holds when the sea breeze fills in, where to drop your hook when you're watching a sailboat race (hint: not on the mark), and the captain-tested sandbar manners — two anchors, no glass, leave only footprints — that keep the best spots on this coast worth going back to. It's the difference between being the captain everybody's glad pulled in next to them and the one whose stern anchor dragged into a stranger's cockpit at 2 PM.

Read the whole thing before you cast off this weekend. The Raft-Up, the Regatta, and the Sandbar is live now on the Docklines blog — give it a read, then go show up right.

👉 Read the Full Guide at docksideguide.com

Dockside Guide Lands in Mobile Bay's Summer Fun Issue

Pick up the May issue of Mobile Bay Magazine and flip to page 24 — that's our founder, Thomas Toombs, at the helm.

The story Amelia Rose Zimlich tells in "A Guide to the Dockside Life" starts where every good Dockside Guide story starts: on the back of a napkin, on a Saturday afternoon, with a buddy and a boat and the beginnings of a list. Roughly 40 places between Mobile Bay and Perdido Key later, that napkin became the resource you're reading right now.

If you haven't pointed your bow toward Perdido Key yet this week, it's time to fire up the chartplotter. The 41st Annual Interstate Mullet Toss and Gulf Coast's Greatest Beach Party kicks off tomorrow, April 24 through 26, 2026, on the beach behind the legendary Flora-Bama Lounge & Oyster Bar Gulf Shores, that glorious, ramshackle temple to coastal misbehavior straddling the Alabama–Florida line. For our Docklines readers, the geography couldn't be more convenient: the Flora-Bama sits right on the Gulf, a short run from Perdido Pass, and for boaters willing to drop a hook offshore and tender in, you'll sidestep one of the ugliest parking headaches on the Gulf Coast while securing a front-row seat to fish flying through the April sky.

There's a moment that happens every time I pull into Cotton Bayou and the docks at Zeke's Landing come into view — a moment I've never been able to fully explain to someone who hasn't been there by boat. The charter fleet is staged in the center section, forty-plus hulls pointed toward Perdido Pass and ready for tomorrow's run. The restaurant is open. The Mo Fishin’ Bar has music drifting across the water. Somewhere behind the dry stack facility a forklift is lowering a center console back into the water. Jarett or Brad are sea trialing a boat with a prospective customer. A family just off a dolphin cruise is walking up the boardwalk with their faces still lit up. And I'm sitting at the helm thinking: this is exactly why Dockside Guide exists. Because you cannot know this place from the road. You have to come in from the water to understand what's actually here. 

To the uninitiated, pulling in from the water can feel like entering a busy port city. Here’s how to navigate the ecosystem. Zeke's Landing has been anchored on Cotton Bayou since 1980,.....

The Signs That Tell the Story

Inside the rafters of Tacky Jacks Fort Morgan, the hand-painted ghosts of every bar and restaurant that ever called this marina home still hang from the ceiling — stapled dollar bills and all. If you’ve ever walked into the downstairs bar at Tacky Jacks on Fort Morgan Road and looked up, you know the ceiling tells a story that no menu ever could. Stapled to the rafters are dozens of dollar bills, scrawled with names, dates, and messages. But look a little closer and you’ll notice something else: old hand-painted signs — five of them — for restaurants and bars that no longer exist but once made this same waterfront marina their home.