The Story Behind CoCo and Her SeaMonkey

Every business has an origin story.

Ours just happens to involve Key West, a lifelong love of the water, a woman whose name practically gave her a nickname, a Boxer with a monkey face, and eventually a guy who spent so much time on the water that his wife started calling him her Sea Monkey.

None of it was dreamed up in a marketing meeting.

It just happened.

And looking back, that’s probably why the names—and the businesses behind them—fit us so well.

Today, visitors know Sea Monkey Charters for private adventures through the backcountry waters of the Lower Florida Keys, exploring secluded sandbars, remote islands, mangrove channels, and places many visitors never realize are here.

But the Sea Monkey story actually started somewhere else.

It started with CoCo’s Monkey.

How CoCo’s Monkey Got Its Name

Long before there was a CoCo’s Monkey store, there was simply CoCo.

Courtney Collins has been known as CoCo since her childhood tennis days—and once you see her name written down, the nickname makes perfect sense:

Courtney Collins.

The name stuck. Over the years, friends, family, and eventually plenty of people around Key West simply came to know her as CoCo.

Then there was Molly.

Molly was our Boxer, and if you’ve ever spent much time around Boxers, you probably already understand where her nickname came from. With their scrunched-up features, floppy jowls, and short noses, Boxers just naturally have a little bit of a monkey face to them.

Somewhere along the way, she started calling Molly Monkey.

And just like CoCo, the nickname stuck.

So when Courtney eventually created her Key West retail business, the name was already waiting for her:

CoCo’s Monkey.

What began as a couple of family nicknames became a Key West business inspired by many of the things that have always been part of our lives—animals, the ocean, island living, adventure, maybe a little bit of alcohol, and the culture of this wonderfully unusual place we call home.

There wasn’t a grand plan at the time to create a family of “Monkey” businesses.

That part came later.

From CoCo’s Monkey to Sea Monkey

Once CoCo’s Monkey became part of our lives, another “Monkey” eventually joined the family.

Me.

I’ve spent most of my life on or around the water, and somewhere along the way, CoCo started calling me her Sea Monkey.

Like most of the nicknames in our family, it wasn’t created with a business in mind. It was simply something she called me.

But years later, when the charter business began taking shape, Sea Monkey Charters suddenly seemed like the most natural name in the world.

And the name had a history behind it long before there was ever a charter boat carrying it.

My relationship with the water goes back much farther than Sea Monkey Charters.

After moving from Kodiak Island, Alaska to the Florida Keys as a kid, the water became a huge part of my life. As a teenager, I worked as a sailing instructor and parasail mate at Smathers Beach. Over the years, that grew into working as a parasail captain, mechanic, business owner, and eventually spending much of my life on or around boats.

But some of my favorite time on the water had nothing to do with work.

It was exploring.

Long before GPS and modern chartplotters made navigating the backcountry as easy as following a line on a screen, my friends and I spent countless hours learning these waters the old-fashioned way.

We explored winding mangrove channels, searched for sandbars, and found remote islands. Every once in a while, we’d discover one of those places that made you wonder how something so beautiful could exist just a few miles from Key West while so few people seemed to know it was there.

We weren’t scouting destinations for a charter company.

There wasn’t a charter company yet.

We were simply exploring because we wanted to know what was around the next corner.

Years later, those adventures would become part of the foundation for Sea Monkey Charters.

The Part That Can’t Really Be Taught

You can learn how to operate a boat. You can learn navigation. You can study charts, tides, weather, and marine systems.

But there’s another kind of knowledge that only comes from spending a ridiculous amount of time on the same water.

You remember which mangrove channel opens into something beautiful. You learn how a particular sandbar changes with the tide. You notice how the same stretch of water can look completely different depending on the wind, season, sunlight, or water clarity.

Eventually, you stop thinking only about destinations.

You start thinking about possibilities.

That sense of curiosity—the desire to see what’s around the next mangrove island or down a channel you’ve passed a hundred times—is really what eventually became the personality of Sea Monkey Charters.

We didn’t start with a list of tourist destinations and build a charter around them.

We started with places we already loved and decided to share them.

The Wanderlust Behind Sea Monkey Charters

Exploration has always been a big part of the Sea Monkey story.

Even after all these years, I still enjoy finding out what’s around the next corner. Sometimes that means running through a mangrove channel I haven’t explored in a while. Other times it means checking out a sandbar under different tide conditions or simply taking a route I haven’t traveled lately.

The Lower Florida Keys reward that kind of curiosity.

There are places back here that can feel completely different from one day to the next. A sandbar that was barely visible yesterday might be a beautiful stretch of exposed sand today. Water that was stirred up by the wind might suddenly turn crystal clear. Wildlife moves, tides change, and conditions are constantly reshaping what a day on the water can become.

That’s one of the reasons our charters have never been about following the exact same route every day.

We certainly have favorite places, but part of knowing these waters is knowing when not to go to one of them.

Sometimes the best decision a captain can make is to pass by the place everyone else is headed and keep going.

That’s where all those years of wandering around the backcountry start to matter.

Guests may come aboard with an idea of what they’d like to do—find a beautiful sandbar, explore the mangroves, look for wildlife, swim, relax, or simply see a side of the Keys they haven’t experienced before.

Our job is to take that idea and combine it with what the water is giving us that particular day.

Because around here, some of the best adventures aren’t necessarily the ones you plan.

They’re the ones you find.

And Then There Were the Dogs

Dogs have always been part of our lives, and long before Sea Monkey Charters existed, I had one dog who became especially connected to my life on the water.

Her name was Soggy.

In 2008, I had the opportunity to rescue an eight-week-old chocolate Lab puppy. I named her Soggy, which turned out to be a pretty appropriate name considering the life she was about to have.

At the time, I was captain of a Sebago Watersports parasail boat docked at Schooner Wharf in downtown Key West.

Soggy started coming to work with me.

And then she just kept coming.

For almost five years, she went to work with me virtually every day and grew up aboard that parasail boat. On busy days, we could have 12 new passengers coming aboard every hour, which meant Soggy spent her days meeting a constantly changing cast of people from all over the world.

To her, that was just normal life.

She rode on boats and jet skis, spent countless hours around the water, and even had opportunities to swim with dolphins.

And when the workday ended, Soggy’s social calendar wasn’t necessarily finished.

She became a familiar face around the waterfront and would often join us for happy hour at the nearby bars. Over the years, an awful lot of people around Key West got to know her.

Soggy passed away in 2020, but even today she is well remembered around town.

She had an amazing life.

And looking back, I think Soggy probably helped shape something about Sea Monkey Charters years before I ever realized it.

She showed me just how naturally a dog could become part of a life spent on the water.

So when Sea Monkey Charters eventually came along, making it dog-friendly never felt like some special feature we needed to add.

To us, it just made sense.

If we loved taking our dogs out on the water, there had to be other people who felt the same way.

And there definitely are.

For a dog that loves the water, a sandbar can be one enormous playground. They can splash through shallow water, swim, run around with their people, investigate absolutely everything, and then climb back aboard completely exhausted and usually very pleased with themselves.

For their owners, it means something else.

They don’t have to leave a member of the family behind while everyone else goes out for the day.

That’s really where the dog-friendly side of Sea Monkey came from.

It wasn’t a marketing idea.

It was simply an extension of the way we already lived.

Two Businesses, One Life

When you look at CoCo’s Monkey and Sea Monkey Charters from the outside, they might seem like two very different businesses.

One is a retail store in Key West.

The other takes people out on the water.

But to us, they’ve always had much more in common than it might appear.

Both grew out of things that were already part of our lives: Key West, animals, the ocean, adventure, and a certain willingness to wander a little beyond the ordinary.

Neither one was created by sitting down and asking, “What kind of brand should we build?”

The names came from our lives.

The personalities came from our lives.

And eventually, the businesses did too.

That may be one reason we’ve never wanted Sea Monkey Charters to feel like guests are simply buying a few hours on a boat.

We want them to experience some of what made us fall in love with these waters in the first place.

Sometimes that’s standing on a beautiful sandbar with almost nobody else around. Sometimes it’s spotting a dolphin or sea turtle along the way. Sometimes it’s winding through the mangroves and realizing that just a short boat ride from Key West, the world can suddenly feel very far away.

And sometimes it’s watching somebody’s Boxer launch herself off the boat toward a sandbar like she’s been waiting her entire life for that exact moment.

We can definitely relate to that one.

CoCo’s Monkey and Sea Monkey Charters may be two different businesses, but they came from the same place: the life we were already living.