Nursing a party headache from the night before, he held the mike close to his light brown beard and recited the rules of the day. His eyes were locked on LORAN, the Long Range Navigation system to his right side.

"We've got a storm around us, so it might get a little rough today," he said in a deep authoritative voice. "The best thing to do if you feel like you're going to get sick is just hang your head over the side and let it rip."

Passengers outside the wheel house of the deep sea fishing boat burst out laughing, and Hubbard leaned out the starboard side and said, "Hey, that's just chow."

Unlike Ahab, the Skipper and other sea captains of lore, the man at the helm of the Miss Pass-a-Grille is no grizzled, gruff veteran. He's 6 feet 5 inches, weighs a taut 183 pounds and is 22 years old.

"Even though he's in school full-time, and he works full-time, and he parties full-time, he still manages to run that business like it's his own." - Donna Hubbard

But what he lacks in age he makes up in legacy. Hubbard is a third-generation boat captain. His grandfather, Wilson Hubbard, started Hubbard's Marina in John's Pass, which is now owned by his uncle.

Garett Hubbard inherited the family passion for the sea. But he has sidestepped the family business, choosing instead to work his way up on his own. He captains for Randy Coffman's Miss Pass-a-Grille Deep Sea Fishing, which runs a charter out of Pass-a-Grille's Merry Pier in St. Pete Beach. He also helps Coffman run a private 66-foot luxury fishing boat owned by a Florida business executive and takes over the business when Coffman is out of town.

"I've made a name for myself," he said. "If I would have worked up there, I would just be another Hubbard."

His family's ties to the St. Pete Beach fishing industry stretch to his current location at the Merry Pier. Wilson Hubbard started his business there in 1929. He purchased the pier, then renamed Hubbard's Pier, for $40. His first boat was the Miss Pass-a-Grille, the name of the boat Garett Hubbard now captains.

Hubbard has been working on this boat since he was 16. He got his captain's license at 18, as soon as he legally could. At that time, the average age of boat captains in Florida was 46, according to a study released by the University of Florida.

He is steering his life off the water, too. In addition to his full-time job as a fishing boat captain, he's a full-time finance student at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. He'll graduate in December with his bachelor's degree and plans to pursue a master's in either international business or business administration.

Hubbard's lived in his entire life by the ocean. Although he doesn't have any set plans, he said maybe one day he'll follow in his grandfather's footsteps and start a marina of his own.

Click here to visit the Miss Pass-a-Grille on the web.

Interested in more? Click here to see the related design project, "The young man and the sea."