Sometimes in this job—actually a lot of the time—a conversation with someone on one topic expands into something else entirely. Such was the case when I reached out to Capt. Anthony Noury. It turned out that Noury has owned Charleston, South Carolina’s Sea Tow franchise for better than two decades and it quickly became clear that not only is his story interesting, so is the knowledge and wisdom he has to pass along about running a recovery—and in some cases a rescue—operation.
Power & Motoryacht: Tell us a bit about how you came to run a big Sea Tow operation.
Anthony Noury: It’s pretty simple: love of the outdoors. I think you can probably attest; we have that here in droves. I often tell people, if they move here: If you lived in Colorado on top of a mountain, you’d probably ski or snowboard. It’s our biggest asset, and getting out on the water is one of the best things you can do locally. I was born and raised in South Carolina. I knew I wanted to live here [in Charleston] one day. I had a chance to move here as a young adult and raise our family here, and we’ve been here for the last 35 years. I’ve been pretty much boating all my life.
PMY: How did you transition into this line of work?
Noury: I was in the medical sales business—a sales rep in the operating rooms here in town, and I was out with one of my general surgeons from the Florence area on his boat—a hot August day back in 2003, 2004, and his boat broke down. He said, well, I got a company that’ll come get us, and he came and got us—a young, professional guy. Two-and-a-half hours later, we get back to Daniel Island, and he has a bill of $900. He was a little upset about that, but he wasn’t a member of any company at the time. And of course, I called Sea Tow, which I was a member of, and they said, “Yeah, that’s what happens if somebody doesn’t have a membership.”
And I kind of jokingly said at the time, “I was once interested in buying this business back in the ‘98 timeframe, but I had our first child, and didn’t pursue it.” Well, he called back the next day and said, “Would you be interested in buying (the Charleston) Sea Tow?” I was kind of at a transitional point. After doing medical sales for about 17 years, I wanted to make a change. Now it’s coming up on my 21st season. It started off real small, and it’s grown into a nice business.
PMY: So you’re a local franchise. Can you describe the structure of Sea Tow, or even TowBoatUS to name a competitor, whether here, in Savannah, Goergia, or, say, Melbourne, Florida?
Noury: You’ve said it all there. Actually, we’re kind of a franchisee company. They (TowBoatUS) are more of a licensee company. Very similar in operations in each of those towns along the seaboard, and a lot of times, lakes have them as well. It’s almost continuous from Brownsville, Texas all the way up to Maine.
PMY: Where is the main headquarters and what sort of interaction might you have with them day to day?
Noury: If somebody dials an 800 number, it’s going to come to through them, then dispatch to us. That’s a daily interaction we would have with the center in Southold, New York on the North Fork of Long Island.
PMY: Let’s talk a bit about the day-to-day work, supposing someone wants to become a captain for Sea Tow.
Noury: I always say, you got to keep your schedule healthy. You got to keep your boats healthy. You got to keep people healthy. Any of that goes wrong, it’s probably going to give you some difficulties. So, making certain we have enough people to cover the call schedule is critical, making certain that boats are maintained, or if there’s been a problem, addressing it early so it doesn’t linger and cause a more difficult situation down the road.
PMY: How many boats are we talking here?
Noury: Our franchise owns five boats. We really run the business with three, and occasionally a fourth one, an 18-foot Boston Whaler, that we’ll launch if we have a bridge opening, a parade, or something like that. But those three vessels, the three primaries, are two (TwinVee) catamarans and a rigid-hull (Almar) inflatable that has four-season capability. As long as those stay healthy and ready to roll, we can generally operate and handle the call volume that we get here in Charleston.
PMY: What do you look for in a Captain? And do they only use Sea Tow boats?
Noury: Only Sea Tow boats. That’s changed over the years, but the franchise has to own and equip the boats. When we hire somebody, we make sure that they kind of understand call responsibilities; a lot of people don’t get being on call. Sometimes you hire firemen that might understand it. Somebody that’s in the emergency management business; they generally understand it. But sometimes other people that aren’t used to calls don’t really understand it. And sometimes we actually term a phrase called the burden of call. They’re wanting to get that call immediately, and then they almost can’t stand the wait for a call to come in. It’s kind of like a fireman that goes through a lot of training, starts on the truck, and he may not deal with a fire for the first month that he’s working, but wants to show whatever knowledge that he or she may have. So, a lot of times we say that what’s normal is that you do your normal activities, whatever that is. But if you’re on call—as long as you can get down to the boats within 20 minutes to get underway when the call comes in, that’s all that we require. So, do what you need to do. But when the call comes in, you gotta get moving.
PMY: Are they on the clock?
Noury: Each franchise does it differently. Our guys are on a 24-hour clock— starting at seven in the morning, ‘til seven o’clock the next morning. We have 21 years of good books to say that the call volume does not happen much at night—but if it does, we have to go.
PMY: When you get on a call, how does that work?
Noury: It can come directly into us locally (via the call center), or radio. We take down what’s called a call log, and ask a lot of questions; how many people on board, where you’re located, what’re your coordinates? It’s very similar to what the Coast Guard would ask. We’re going to ask a little bit more than the Coast Guard once we realize there’s not a danger for the individual. If they say, “Well, we’re broken down.” Well, what is it? Engine? Is it electrical? Is it steering? Or your trim and tilt that are stuck—do you happen to have a flathead screwdriver (to relieve the hydraulic pressure and lower it)? If we can assist on scene with whatever that problem is, it’s going to get you home quicker and probably safer, because you’re going to be under your own power. Help lower that engine down so you can run—it’s a much happier customer.
PMY: How do you work with the Coast Guard?
Noury: There’s going to be plenty of times that we can’t do what a specific customer may ask us to do in terms of a safety perspective. One of our neighboring franchises just had a job that came in—70 miles offshore. It was, I want to say, a sailing vessel that lost some steerage. But the conditions were bad, right? Our boats are all 25, 26 feet in length, generally one- or two-person operations—that are going to go that distance. Considering the conditions, that franchise decided to call the Coast Guard to say, hey, this might be something that y’all need to get started, and then we’ll try and relieve you at whatever point that we can relieve you. So, the Coast Guard had to go out the 70 miles to get this particular boat. It has a getting-underway time of about five hours. It was a big deal, if that sort of answers your question. Sometimes we work very closely with our other government agencies that we partner with … or we just want to let them know we’re about to go out into these kinds of bad conditions. We want to communicate with you every 30 minutes, to let you know we are OK throughout the process.
PMY: Can you talk about what memberships cover?
Noury: The vast majority have what’s called a Gold membership. That’s going to cover things such as towing on the water when you have breakdown; dock-to-dock tow, when you break down at your dock and need to go to the landing to go to get hauled out; jump-starts to send you home. A lot of times people want jump starts at the landing. They go to launch their boat and it’s dead. We don’t do that, really. We actually are putting you in harm’s way. If we jump start you at the landing to send you out on the water, you’re gonna probably falter again.
PMY: Is it my boat, or is it me that’s covered? And what about family members and friends?
Noury: It is the boat itself and the individual that’s covered. A real rough example: You take your family out for a picnic on Capers Island, and your son goes with you, and he wants a friend to come out. You say, well, he’s old enough, he’s good enough. I’ll let him take the boat back to pick up his friend and bring him back out to the beach. He runs aground during that time frame that he’s away from you. The boat’s covered. So we’re going out to service him. So, you can actually loan the boat to anybody you’d want. If they’re using your boat, that boat’s covered. So that’s where the advantage, where you as an individual, are covered. If it’s your bare boat, you chartered a boat, it’s going to cover you on that bare-boat charter as well.
PMY: Say I’m going out with my neighbor on his boat and I have a Sea Tow membership and I’m driving.
Noury: No. You are a guest on board your friend’s boat. You just happen to be at the helm at the time, but you’re a guest on board. Not covered.
PMY: We have a little 14-foot McKee, and then we have our HydraSports 21. Do I need both of those boats on the account?
Noury: You don’t have to, but you should have them on there. It just helps to eliminate problems. When we pull up the account, we’ll actually say, “Are you on the HydraSports?” You say, “Well, I’m on the McKee.” An example: We just got a new Pathfinder, and we haven’t added it to the membership. No problem. We can come out and service and we’ll always ask, “Do you have the paperwork—which the DNR would ask you for—that shows you as the owner? That’s all you got to show. If you don’t have that, and you still want services, we’re probably going to go ahead and take a credit card for the amount of what it would be, as long as you can show the proof of documents in a 24-, 48-hour period.
PMY: What about covering leaks and groundings?
Noury: When somebody says: “I have a little bit of water in my boat,” we stop asking the normal questions. We ask, generally, “The amount of water, is it over your feet? Is it between your ankles and knees? Or is it above your knees? Just a little bit below my knees?” That’s a lot of water. The word “little.” “We have a little fire on board.” “We have a little bit of loose gas in the bilge.” “I’m a little bit aground.” Can you send us a picture? And they’re high and dry on an oyster bed, so we try to get them to understand what is covered and what isn’t. An example on ungrounding: There are five criteria for a soft ungrounding. A soft ungrounding is when water surrounds the boat. Is there some movement to the boat? Can we rock the boat around a little bit? Can we unground with one boat? Can we do it in 15 minutes or less? And can the boat get under its own way once we’re done? Say they put it up at the dune line, at full high tide, went walking for five hours, came back, and that’s now high and dry. Now, I would say that’s not covered. However, the water is probably going to come back in and it’s going to fulfill those requirements. Let’s just wait.
PMY: Can you talk a little bit about size parameters?
Noury: 65 feet is the maximum length for membership. I pretty much hold firm to that in Charleston. We can see a lot larger than that here. But it comes down to what you (the Sea Tow operation) have the insurance coverage for. And some of those larger than 65 can take you way beyond your insurance capability. It’s just not worth it for us to cover the very infrequent times for us to cover these big boats. However, if you’re in Miami, if you’re in Washington, D.C., where there are more large yachts, you may need to increase that and be able to offer services for those boats coming in and out of those ports. So, it kind of depends on your area, but in terms of membership throughout the entire network, 65 feet is the general limit.
PMY: What’s a piece of advice you’d give, as a boater yourself, just doing this for as long as you have?
Noury: Don’t neglect the $12 part. The $12 battery cable, the bilge pump that went out, or the float switch, or the loose flange in your seacock, or whatever it is. It’s a $12 part. It takes seconds to put it on. Put it on. The $12 part is the nemesis of almost all boaters, and we’ve fallen victim, too. So stay ahead of the $12 part.
See a walkthrough of one of the boats in Noury’s Sea Tow fleet here >>
This article originally appeared in the August/September 2025 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
