27 years of channels marked, towers climbed and buoys set right, given by a man who loved this work more than words can hold. Kaps left us on 25th March 2026, on site, at sea, doing the job he was born to do — 81 years old, and still going strong to his very last day.
WITH AEROMARINE
1999 – 2026 · 27 years
ROLE
Aids to Navigation — installation & commissioning
HIS LAST JOB
Installing & commissioning a channel, on site, at sea
AGE
81 — and still climbing
THE MAN WE CALLED KAPS
Varindernath Kapani joined Aeromarine in 1999, and for the next 27 years he gave us more than we ever had the words to thank him for. Aids to marine navigation weren’t just his job — they were his love, plain and simple, and it showed in everything he did. Everyone at Aeromarine knew him as Kaps, and everyone who ever stood beside him on a site knew exactly why we also called him our Angry Young Man: an aggression and a perseverance in him that never once softened, not with age, not with the toughest installation, not with a channel that seemed impossible to reach. His technical knowledge wasn’t the kind you learn from a manual — it was the kind that comes from decades of loving a craft so deeply that you simply will not let it fail. We were lucky to have him. We didn’t always say so enough.
Ask any customer who ever worked with him and you’ll get the same answer, said with a laugh: they loved him and they couldn’t stand him, often in the same breath. Kaps wouldn’t tell a client what they wanted to hear if it wasn’t right, and wouldn’t leave a site until the job met his own standard, not just theirs. It exasperated people — and it earned him a respect and loyalty you cannot fake, which is why so many of them kept asking for him by name, year after year.
EVERY JOB, HIS WAY
- Took on the trickiest installations in the channel — the ones nobody else wanted — because Kaps never once said a job couldn’t be done.
- Climbed leading light towers 45 to 60 metres high without a second thought, leaving colleagues a third his age standing at the bottom in awe, wondering how a man his age moved like that.
- Fixed whatever needed fixing on site, on the spot, drawing on a depth of technical knowledge on aids to navigation that few in this industry will ever match.
- Carried that same fire into every single job for 27 straight years, and was still on the tools, still commissioning channels at 81 — because retirement was never a word Kaps had much use for.
Remembered by everyone who ever worked beside him for: Fearlessness at height that never once wavered · technical instinct that could fix almost anything on site · a refusal to leave a job unfinished · a warmth and a smile that made every site feel like home · and a nickname — Angry Young Man — that said everything about the fire he brought to work, every single day, for 27 years.
HIS LAST JOB
On 25th March 2026, Kaps left us on site, at sea, installing and commissioning a channel — doing the work he had given 27 years of his heart to, right to his very last moment. He was 81, and by every account still going strong, still climbing, still exactly the Kaps we all knew. There is no easy way to write this, and we won’t pretend there is: he left us doing the job he loved most, on the water he called home, surrounded by the aids to navigation he spent a lifetime setting right. If he had to go, we know he would have chosen exactly this — on site, with his boots on, in the middle of the work.
WHY WE'LL NEVER FORGET HIM
A channel marked at night, a leading light burning true, a buoy holding its station in a hard sea — Kaps gave 27 years to making sure those things simply worked, without ever once asking for the credit. His love and passion for aids to marine navigation went beyond words, and so did his aggression and his perseverance on every single job, tricky or routine, close to shore or far from it. He taught us that a job is never too hard, a tower never too high, and an age never too great to still show up and do it right. Aeromarine will not see another Angry Young Man like him — not because we haven’t looked, but because there was only ever one Kaps. He was a legend on every site he ever worked, he was family long before he was staff, and he will be missed, loved and remembered forever.
On Every Site, Every Time
From the deck of a workboat to the top of a leading light tower — 27 years of hands-on work, given with everything he had.
The Man Behind the Work
From a young technician in 2006 to the legend everyone at Aeromarine called Kaps — always with a smile, always ready to teach, always missed from this day forward.
