Well, if you have a graphic designer at your shop, I'd say it's generally their job to decide what fonts are appropriate, not the client's job. However, a font list might be good for B2C jobs like boat lettering.
I would suggest typing out the name of the font and then all uppercase, lowercase and numerals. Repeat for each font you want, then print and put in a binder. There might be an automated tool out there to do it, but it doesn't take long to do one manually if you're keeping a reasonable limit on the number of fonts.