Experience and Qualifications 

I got my start in the "marine industry" in the early 60’s in Southern California. Sure it was inauspicious, rowing a waterlogged, wooden 500 pound skiff most of every day for one summer in a teen program, but I really liked boats and was hooked! From that experience to this day, if it does not have a sail or an engine, I'm not going out. By the mid 60’s I was working as a commerical deck hand for around $1.00 per hour and loved it, good weather or bad.(Bad weather was more fun!) I learned that commercial boat owners get real upset when their boats are not running! Something about nutritional value? The boats don't run, they don't eat.

In the late 60’s I got my first trip across the Pacific, this time as a U.S. Marine in a special task force heading to Vietnam on an old Korean era aircraft carrier, still we did get to ride out a catagory 1 typhoon in the South China Sea, cool. By the mid 70’s, working as a mechanic and trainer for Porsche of America and in the propane fuel and systems industry, power boats became my passion. I had also caught the SCUBA diving bug and spent all free time below the surface. My big question with boats then was, “how fast can this boat get me there"? Performance and durability meant more bottom time, a "stinkpotters" utopia!

I got "into" sailboats in the late 70's and by the early 80's bought my first one. This little "pocket cruiser" had been sitting in an obscure boatyard for a couple of years and was waist deep full of rainwater. I didn't see any hull leaks so I bought it! Ugly thing, even after I did the refit and real difficult to get use to moving at a breath taking 5 knots! But, then I bought the bigger second one, then the bigger third one. Again, I did the refits (sometimes doing the same system 2 or 3 times, so contact me and save time and money) but they got a little faster and lots better looking. Rigging and sail shape means more than horsepower and prop size to "ragbaggers".

By the end of the 80’s, my wife and I were off and spent close to 10 years and 25,000+ miles cruising the Eastern, Central, and South Pacific. Now that's not fast in a slow sailboat, but we spent a year and a half just in Mexico. We just didn't look out the portholes as we passed some of the greatest cruising areas in the world! We got to places where the kids had never seen an American.  Of course, I got to do all that really filthy boatyard stuff in yards in different countries and as a manager in one here in Hawaii.

As my hair turned grayer through the late 90’s, I started consulting for a local outfit here in Hawaii that was rebuilding and remodeling small passenger vessels for commercial service, and repairing historical U.S. Navy vessels in Pearl Harbor. Both ends of the financial spectrum, i. e., commercial operators tightening their belts with every dollar spent and seemingly unlimited tax dollars bringing

truly historical and well used vessels to yacht quality!

Through out all those years around the the water, I have met many, many "surveyors", a few impressed me but most did not! Some did not seem to be professional at all! Some were down right biased "the only well made boat is a ---". Some didn't appear to be working only for their clients, the people that payed them! In fact, it was trying to work with a surveyor that I ended up going to Florida and graduating from the Charles F. Chapman School of Marine Surveying (yes, the Piloting, Seamanship, and Small Boat Handling Book people) great school, great instructors, and a great experience. I thought I knew most everything about boats before I got there, but in a small class of 10 with some great instructors that had been doing hull surveys or engine surveys or electrical surveys or rigging surveys for 35 or 40 years, you listen! Now the older I get, the more I need to learn just to keep up and the Society of Accredited Marine Surveyors mandates education on a yearly basis to stay a member or your outta there!

So, if it’s floating, I have probably, studied it, rode it, drove it, consulted, or surveyed it. All these experiences, the education, and the training have impressed some lessons upon me. Clients, commercial or private, need the same confidence with the job I have done, that my family would if I were applying my craft for them. Clients pay me for an educated, unbiased, and uninfluenced assessment of the vessel and are the sole owners of that assessment. Clients, have the right, long after the survey, to ask for assistance. I constantly research the industry to stay current as possible, listen to opposing opinions from colleagues in and out of the industry, and watch the technology changes and innovations.  I take my responsibility to you seriously. You need to know if the boat you fell in love with will keep you and your family safe, or that your commerical vessel not only complies with regulations but can have minimum downtime. You need to know what is right and what needs to be fixed, and what that real market value is, that's the job.

Contact me at, 

Phone: 808-375-8260 

Email: Bob@BoatSurveysHawaii.com 

Robert J. “Bob” Dupuis

Marine Surveyor/Consultant