I was really skeptical when my buddy said we were renting a pontoon boat for the day. I have been on at least a 1/2 dozen boats on my life, sat behind the wheel of maybe one of them. We show up at Shell Island Boat Rentals, and had an awesome experience. The pontoon boats are super easy to captain. The water in the bay is very easy to navigate. As long as you give the bigger boats some room, you too can have a successful day on the water.

The equipment -- the operations of the pontoon boat are really simple. Trim, throttle, and tunes. You can turn on the navigation lights if you want to get fancy! Out boat was brand new. The Black Pearl had been out once or twice before. It had plenty of storage for our lunch and coolers. The boat was good for at least 10 to 15 knots getting us from one side of the bay to another on about 45 minutes.

Shell island was awesome. My wife and I spend a fair amount of time at the outer banks and shell island is so much better. There are several anchor spots to choose from. We picked the furthest point and anchored for several hours. You can float on 3 feet of water in the bay, or take a quick hike to the gulf side of Shell Island. It was the best day we had for the whole vacation.

Customer Service -- Shell Island Boat Rental folks are amazing. Since we are talking about marine equipment, sometimes stuff happens right? Our quick connect fuel line got disconnected 1/4 of the way home in the middle of the bay. Cell reception with Verizon was spot on and we phoned back for help. Our guy came out within an hour and diagnosed the problem and had us up and running in no time. Too bad I was such a newbie, I could have saved them a trip. He was really cool about the whole thing, and we would definitely recommend this company to anyone visiting Panama City Beach area. How did the fuel line get disconnected? The group agreed it was a local sea yeti pulling pranks

We did a dolphin tour and then searched for sand dollars. Though our captain was running a little late due to boat maintenance, he was prompt in getting us where we could start seeing dolphins. It was a fun ride around and really a game to see who could spot the most dolphins. He would park us right where they were swimming and tell us when to slip out of the boat to see them. And we did! So cool to see the pods in their natural habitat, still showing off, jumping, doing flips. Even the baby dolphins! It was also nice to see different company crews working together telling each other where they were spitting them. It made an overall great experience not just for us but the other guests wanting to have fun. There were 4 of us which we definitely appreciated- we don't like big noisy crowds so the experience was very personable. After seeing and watching dolphins for about 1.5 hours he parked us in a shallow part of the bay and we found a ton of live sand dollars. Also spotted a stingray, turtle, and some other marine life. Water was a bit murky due to rain but you can't really get away from that.
Overall I would say its worth $50 per person considering you get to watch dolphins from a distance anyone can appreciate aNd stop to snorkel for shells and things.
Great job guys and keep it up!