Free dockside pickup in South Tampa · Stories, songs, salt
The Ballast Point novels
Captain Johny writes the way he runs a skiff: close to the mangrove, allergic to souvenirs. These are Gulf adventures — smugglers who are mostly tired, islands that argue with paper, and weather that has a sense of humor. If you wanted a blender on the cover, you are in the wrong shop.
2026 · Act One
A 1979 Bertram named Wasn't Me, a tick that is not the fuel pump, and one outgoing tide that pays like six months. Act One, complete.
The port engine started making a new noise four miles off Egmont Key, on a Tuesday, with three insurance adjusters from Dayton in my cockpit and one of them already committed to being sick.
Captain Johny
A Ballast Point novel
2026
2026 · 284 pages
A chart-thief, a captain, and an island that is only there on certain tides.
The boy stole charts the way other children stole candy: not for the sugar, for the map of where the sugar lived. His name was Cal. He was twelve, which in Tampa is old enough to run a skiff and too young to be believed about anything important.
Captain Johny
Stories from the bay
2025
2025 · 198 pages
Twelve stories. Dockhands, night nurses, a woman who names snook, and a radio that only works on outgoing water.
There is a window, some mornings, when the wind has not read the forecast yet. Captains call it a weather window and treat it like a rumor they are lucky to have overheard. You put the boat in. You do not announce it. You come home before the rumor is corrected.