Captain's Choice Marine Survey

Orillia, Ontario
Richard Hutchings
Principal Marine Surveyor

Serving Lake Simcoe, Georgian Bay and the Muskokas

 
Richard Hutchings is not your typical textbook surveyor who took a weekend course to become a marine surveyor. He had spent years being involved with the marine trade as well as spending three years of college to further study the trade.

Growing up in a business family, his parents operated a service garage for cars, trucks and boats. Richard spent his later childhood working in the shop, standing on pop crates to change spark plugs or working on customer's vehicles.

Water and boats have been a life long fascination since birth and to this day. Starting with his first purchase of a 16' Peterborough boat he bought from saving his allowance, weekend and summer time wages. He replaced the worn out transom, totally refinished all the varnish bright work and immediately sold it to one of his parents customers for cold hard cash. Richard then immediately bought a damaged 16' fiberglass runabout, repaired, refinished it and immediately sold it. It was obvious that the marine trade, for a teenager, had become a good source of income.

Water skiing came next as well as taking up hang gliding and a couple of years later he started a water ski school and performed water ski shows on weekends at resorts and public water front parks throughout the Kawarthas, Haliburton and Muskoka.

During the late 70s and 80's and 90's, Richard developed business of repairing and rigging ski boats, bass boats and small racing boats and then finally moving onto bigger vessels. While taking a Marine Technology course at Georgian College for three years, in which he graduated with an Honours Diploma, Richard worked part time for a boating facility that specialized in off shore power boats for more experience with advanced engine building and rigging.

After college, as a change of pace and again for more knowledge, Richard refinished a personal project of restoring his 36 foot, 1954 Chris Craft Corvette that he had purchased from an estate of the original owner. This beautiful classic won several local Classic Boat Shows before finally selling her to a banker from the US.

For the next three seasons, Richard and his wife moved to the British Virgin Islands and professionally chartered a Catamaran for a world famous charter company and had the opportunity to visit most of the Caribbean Islands as well as meeting some very interesting people, who even today keep in touch via email. They have appeared on several TV shows such as Canadian Sport Fishing with Henry and Italo and been featured in travel articles for Conte Nast Travel magazine. They also competed in Foxy's Wooden Boat Regatta in 1999 and won their class in a borrowed sail boat with a friend from Canada.

After returning to Ontario, Captain's Choice Marine was opened to offer clients years of marine experience and knowledge gained over the last 25 or so years to realize their dreams of owning a boat of their own.