A small fleet, run properly.
El Capitan Marine started out of a love of the ocean, with one boat and one rule: look after the day like it was your own birthday. The love got out of hand. Today we run an eleven-boat fleet across three harbours, and the rule has not changed.
Justin Spreckley owns and runs the show. Nadia runs the office. Rico and a handful of trusted freelance skippers run the boats.
The person who answers the phone
Justin Spreckley owns El Capitan Marine and runs it. If you phone the number on this site during working hours, he is usually the one who picks up.
He came to this from two directions. The first is the water: competitive offshore sailing, surfing and offshore fishing, over enough years to have opinions about all three. He is a member of the Royal Cape Yacht Club, the False Bay Yacht Club and the Oceana Power Boat Club, and has served on FBYC committees.
The second is running things properly. Before the boats there was a career in civil engineering and construction: a National Diploma in Civil Engineering, an MBA from the UCT Graduate School of Business, and years spent as a managing director. That is not the usual background for a charter operator, and it is most of the reason this business has certificates filed, checklists that get completed, and a booking system rather than a WhatsApp thread.
Both halves matter. Plenty of people love boats. Fewer are interested in whether the safety certificate is current.
How it started
El Capitan Marine began with one boat and one rule: look after the day like it was your own birthday.
What started as a love of the ocean has grown into a working fleet of eleven boats across three harbours, a permanent berth in Simon's Town, and a small team of skippers. The rule has not changed.
The line we hold
Three things we will not do, because they are how charter operators lose people's trust:
We will not run a day we should not. The skipper's call on the weather is final, and we make it 48 hours out rather than on the morning. If we cancel, you choose a refund or a new date.
We will not sell you the wrong month. If you ask for a tuna charter in July, we will tell you the fish are not there and suggest when they will be. That costs us bookings and saves everyone a bad day.
We will not carry more people than the certificate allows. Every boat has a certified maximum. It is not negotiable, and it is why we occasionally have to move a group onto a bigger boat or across two.
The crew
Skippers hold the appropriate SAMSA licence, matched to the class of vessel they run, and everyone operates under a written code of conduct covering safety, vessel care and incident reporting.
More on the paperwork side is on safety and credentials: certificates per boat, insurance, the charter association, and the pre-departure checklist.
9 boats.
5 deep sea fishing boats · 3 RIBs · 1 inshore boat. Each named, each with its own sigil, and each certified for the water it works. Specs on every boat come from its SAMSA safety certificate, not from a brochure.
— Where we sail —Three harbours.
- Cape Town · V&A Waterfront · Table Bay
- The city base. Private charters, family days and corporate days across Table Bay, with Table Mountain behind you the whole way.
- Simon's Town · False Bay · the fishing base
- The False Bay side, and where the fishing happens. Sheltered water, about half an hour from Cape Point, with the penguins and the seals on the doorstep.
- Langebaan · West Coast · the lagoon
- Two hours up the West Coast, and a completely different body of water: a shallow turquoise lagoon backing onto the West Coast National Park.