Hope Island duo lends lifeline to overindulging boaties

TOO many drinks out on the boat? No need to risk your licence or peoples' lives. Two Hope Island lads have a novel plan to get you back on dry land.

Benn Weatherseed and Emilion Finizo at Hope Island launching their new business called Gold Coast Skipper Services.

GROWING up around boaties gave two young Hope Island men an idea to help stop sauced-up sea dogs losing their licence or their lives - and make money doing it.

Benn Weatherseed, 20, and Emilio Finizio, 16, have started a business to drive boaties who have had too much to drink back to shore.

As part of Gold Coast Skipper Services, they hop in a rigid-hulled inflatable boat, motor to where the partying boaties are anchored, and skipper the vessel home.

But as Mr Finizio is still to finish Year 12 at The Southport School next year, it will operate on weekends and school holidays for now.

Mr Weatherseed, who met his business partner at TSS, said the idea had come from seeing friends and associates get caught out overindulging on the water.

"As it gets into summer people will use their boats more and get the drinks flowing a bit more," he said.

"You hear people driving their boats home drunk, they hit a marker, or a sandbar, or another boat, but we want to help people get home safely.

"It will stop people being caught by the water police or from hurting other people."

Benn Weatherseed and Emilion Finizo at Hope Island launching their new business called Gold Coast Skipper Services.

There have been high-profile Gold Coast cases where drunk boaties have maimed and even killed people.

In 2006, Sandra Crellin, 46, was hacked to death by a boat's propellers when she fell off the vessel while on a Christmas party cruise.

The ship's skipper Russell Dudley Smith, 58, was convicted and fined $1200 for driving the boat while three times over the legal limit and was then charged with unsafe operation of a ship.

Jamie Mcatamney, of Runaway Bay, was driving his jetski on the Broadwater on July 4, 2010, when his wife who was riding behind him fell off and hit the propeller which sliced off her leg.

He had a blood alcohol reading of 0.072 and was fined $400 and disqualified from driving a vessel for a month.

Mr Weatherseed said both of the skipper service lads grew up around boats, while he had been working in the boating industry for the past four years and is currently working towards his commercial captain's licence.

"I've driven everything from 160 footers to little tinnies," he said.

Mr Finizio's family operate Kingfisher Cruiser dealership Formway Group Marine.

"I grew up with 60-foot cruisers, speed boats, jet skies, tinnies, from the top down," he said.

The service will operate from Southport to Jumpinpin.

They have a Facebook page called Gold Coast Skipper and Detailing Service, while the company is in the process of being formally registered and having a website designed.