Let me tell you a little about my life since West Marine! Again, I was so lucky to find a brand new West Marine store being built very close to our home. We had just returned from sailing KANDARIK around the world. I had been able to wet my appetite for marine retail stores while we lived near Sydney, Australia. We were anchored in a lovely bay, Elvina Bay, just forth of Sydney and I worked for a full year at Whitworth’s Nautical World. Whitworths is the equivalent of West Marine retail stores in Australia. Funny enough, Craig Whitworth had made the original sails for CARRONADE, Andy’s thirty foot sloop that he sailed around Cape Horn!
I began working at West Marine’s newest store in Fort Lauderdale. Actually it was the second store after the Miami West Marine store east of the Mississippi! Just perfect for someone like me who loved the touch, and feel, and reason for each piece of marine hardware. It was a job made in heaven for me as if I was working in a huge jewelry store where every product was like an incredible diamond to me!
It has been nearly 18 years since I began working for West Marine. I can truthfully say it is the second best thing that ever happened to me, the first being falling in love with Andy Wall!
West Marine has given me the opportunity to not only sell the many products to other cruising people, but to learn so much, grow so much under its tutelage, and to expand my horizons! Over the years I was able to establish a confidence in the fact that “I knew what I was doing.” I was familiar with the products I sold, and I could pass on little bits of useful information. My job became the essence of communicating with West Marine’s customers! I literally have NO customers, but have dozens of wonderful friends that I have been honored to meet crossing the threshold of the West Marine stores.
I had a wonderful teacher, Andy Wall. And over the years West Marine allowed me to evolve into a source of information on products, places, and people!!! I became a source of information for the West Marine customers. Today my most honored job is to HELP other cruisers in any way that I can.
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