Everything you need to know about Boat Cards

Boat cards are common amongst full-time cruisers and loopers. It’s part of the boating community experience. In this post, we discuss why you should have a boat card, where to buy boat cards, what to include on them, what information not to include, and where to store boat cards once you receive them. This post is everything you need to know about boat cards.

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Why have a boat card?

Boat cards are similar to business cards but are for boaters, full-time cruisers, and loopers. It’s an easy way to share contact information and remember the people you met along your travels or loop. Boat cards are a great way to share your contact information, boat or loop blog, or social media handles with others so they can contact you in the future. We handed our cards out to other boaters, people who followed our travels through our YouTube videos, and anyone who came up to our boat and was interested in our travels.

We carried cards in my purse, wallets, and our dinghy box, so we always had boat cards available. It was surprising to us how often we’d run into cruisers we had met before and were glad to have their boat cards to remind us of when and where we met. Since the boating community is a pretty tight-knit community, they’re are a great way to remember the boaters you met.

Where to buy boat cards?

Boat cards can be purchased anywhere business cards are sold or can be printed with an at-home printer. Our first set of 100 cards was purchased with Moo, and our second batch of cards was bought on Vistaprint. One benefit of creating your boat cards online is that there are templates that make the design process seamless. Here are a few online businesses that sell boat cards:

• Vistaprint
  • Vistaprint has some great boat card templates for individuals who don’t want to do any design work.
• UPrinting
  • They also print stickers which are popular amongst boaters. We saw several boaters leave their sticker on lock pilings or share their stickers with guests.
• Moo
• Zazzle

For our Great Loop, we bought 100 cards and ran out. We later bought 250 cards and felt that was a sufficient amount. Since there are about 200 loopers in a given year, 250 cards would be plenty! Many of these companies allow you to save your designs to make reordering a second batch easily.

What to include on boat cards?

In general, you should include information about you and your boat on your boat card. Here are some ideas of what information to include:

Boat information

• Name of your boat
• Boat make and model
• Home marina or hailing port
• Marine station call sign
• MMSI number
• Photo of your boat

Owner/Crew Information

• Name of you and your crew and any pets you have on board
• Contact information such as an email address and phone number – we saw many loopers include their phone numbers.
• Photo of you and your crew (the photos are small, usually 1”x1”, so having an up-close photo is helpful)
• Any other relevant information like social media platforms, including a blog, Facebook, YouTube channel, or Instagram account handles

What’s not on a boat card?

Don’t include any information you don’t want to share with others on your boat card. We chose not to include our phone number because we did not want people calling us. Here are some things you may consider to skip:

• Home phone (optional)
• Home or mailing address
• Fax number

What to do with boat cards once you receive them?

Once we received a boat card, we wrote information about the person or couple, including the date we met, the place we met, and any relevant information about our conversations. Did they have kids or a pet? Where are they from? Anything that would help us spark conversation if we would meet again in the future.

How to store boat cards?

With each mile as full-time cruisers or loopers and each boat card we collected, it became apparent that we needed a method to store and organize our boat cards. We kept our cards in the box they came in, which made flipping through these cards easy when we saw people again.

Other options include a 3-ringed binder with business card protector sleeves. This method made flipping through a stack of boat cards incredibly easy as they’re all within sight, easy to flip through, and the protector sleeves help keep them all nicely together. You can also easily see all of the notes I write on the boat cards we receive to help jog my memory when our paths cross again with fellow boaters or loopers.

These items can also make for great and thoughtful gifts for boaters and loopers since it is something they will definitely need!

The ups, downs, and everything in between, we share it all while living on a boat. If you like what you see, then there are lots of ways to show your support and say thanks! The easiest way to support our work is by commenting on this post, liking and sharing our content on Facebook, and pining our content on Pinterest. It’s a small way to say thank you that goes a long way!

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