Captain Josh Wilson

Founder · Owner · USCG-Licensed Master 100‑Ton

Hi, I'm Josh. I'm the founder of Yacht Away Now, the owner of our flagship 52ft Marquis Flybridge, and the captain at the helm on charters out of St. Petersburg, Florida. I started this with one boat to prove what a premium private charter could feel like when nothing was outsourced. Now we are growing it into a curated platform — one hand-selected vessel at a time, only from owners who care about the experience as much as I do. When you book with us, you're not getting a rotating roster of contractors. You're getting me, the boat, and the people I personally trust to look after our guests on the water.

I've held a U.S. Coast Guard Master 100-Ton Near Coastal license for over a decade. That credential is the same class of license required to operate inspected passenger vessels well beyond the size of our yacht, and it covers the full Tampa Bay area, the Gulf Coast, and the Bahamas crossings we run on multi-day charters. I keep my certifications — CPR, AED, and First Aid — current at all times, and the yacht itself carries a full safety inventory: USCG-rated life jackets for every guest, EPIRB, redundant VHF, GPS, radar, and a Starlink connection so we can pull live weather offshore.

I started Yacht Away Now in 2024 for a simple reason: the only way to deliver the experience I wanted guests to have was to own the boat and run it myself. Charter brokers move fast, but they can't promise you the captain, the maintenance standard, or the day-of judgment calls. I can. The yacht gets serviced on the schedule I set, the upholstery gets replaced when it should, and if a sandbar trip needs to swap to Egmont Key because the wind shifted, I'm the one making that call — on the water, in real time.

Most of my time on Tampa Bay water is in this exact vessel, and the rest is two decades of recreational and professional boating across the Gulf and the Keys. That experience matters most when something unexpected comes up: a guest who isn't feeling great offshore, a thunderstorm cell that wasn't on the morning radar, a weekend when the bay is so crowded you have to know which sandbars are still calm. The boat handles itself. My job is to make sure none of that ever becomes your problem.

Off the water, I'm the person who returns your texts, builds your itinerary, and sends the captain check-in the night before your charter. It's a small operation by design. If you call (727) 609-2248 or email josh@yachtawaynow.com, you're talking to me.