Great Lakes Skipper Blog

Meet Miss Blue, Denise Frye's pride and joy! Denise and her husband, David, have lovingly restored this beautiful Wellcraft Scarab III boat over the last couple of years, using some parts from Great Lakes Skipper. The couple has put an enormous amount of work into this project, and the results are impressive. Denise was kind enough to answer our questions about it and share some photos of Miss Blue. 

With the right boat and a wake surfboard, the surf’s up whenever you want! No one knows for sure who was the first brave soul to try surfing a boat's wake, but the sport has come a long way since the 1960s, with specially-designed boats and boards. Continue reading →

Summer! It's finally time for long, sunny days, warm weather - and storms, which can cause more damage than just wet clothes and dampened spirits. Strong winds can whip up waves to dangerous heights, and lightning can be lethal.

Shop the Skipper's hatch sale! Get 10% off hatches, doors, and portlights through April 30. 

You're ready for boat season! Your fiberglass is shiny, your decals are brilliant, your chrome is so bright that it shines like the sun itself. How about those hatches? Is the Plexiglas® hatch lens cracked or clouded? Are the frames discolored? Maybe it's time to swap them out for something new.

Get 'em while they're hot! All boat seats are 10% off through April 14, 2019!

New boat upholstery is so beautiful: flawless and firm. As much as we wish it, it doesn't stay that way; the elements inevitably make their mark. When that time comes, you can look at it as a wonderful opportunity to create a custom seating configuration for your boat.

In 1732, an engineer named Henri Pitot got the job of measuring the flow of the Seine, the famous river that bisects the city of Paris. A late bloomer, Pitot seems to have been an unremarkable student until age 19, when he fell in love with geometry after picking up a book on the subject in a shop. Pitot went on to accomplish many feats of engineering in his career, but it's the contraption he devised to measure the speed of water flow that has made his name famous among boaters.

When boaters talk speedos, they don't mean the cheeky swimwear (well, not usually). The speedometer enjoys pride of place on a boat's dashboard, and when it goes bad, it's pretty obvious. Finding and fixing the problem can take a little detective work, but it's not difficult.

Nobody enjoys bad news, especially not from one of the boat's gauges. If you're getting a reading that doesn't seem right (or no reading at all), it's not difficult to figure out the problem.

With certain parts exposed to the elements, your boat's gauges and their sensors can take a beating. If you suspect that your gauge is not giving you an accurate reading, we have some hints for how to figure out the problem and how to fix it.

The most famous pirate of all time, Blackbeard, died three hundred years ago this week. He inspired Robert Louis Stevenson's Long John Silver and J. M. Barrie's Captain Hook, and has been portrayed on film by actors like Ian McShane and Peter Ustinov. As well known as he is, there is much about him that remains mysterious.