CruiseMasters Is Closing Down

CruiseMasters Boating is closing down.

Nineteen years ago CruiseMasters Boating Instruction had its first client. Now, 617 clients later, representing 2,405 hours of instruction, CruiseMasters is going on the “hard”.

It has been a great experience. An early client turned out to be the owner of  Seattle’s notorious telephone sex operation. Then there were the “second-in-command” sessions at Seattle’s premier yacht club, empowering women to gain their own boat handling skills. (An observation: women make excellent, if not better boat handlers than their male counterparts in many, many cases, if they only would believed in themselves.) Helping with various boat make-specific rendezvous, such as the annual Tollycraft and Grand Banks gatherings. Delivering vessels to their new owners and moorages. It was all great.

At one time we explored franchising CruiseMasters to Southern California, but even with enthusiastic possibilities, that proved not to be

And there was instructing with the boating industry’s Certified Professional Yacht Broker program, as well as helping design the now mandatory Washington State Boater Education program.

At first it was rough starting, involving a lot of personal contact marketing and proving quality of both instruction and content. Talk about winning confidence. As the program grew, most new clients soon came from marine insurance brokers, boat brokers themselves (bless you all), marine surveyors and boatwrights, and former clients moving up and needing recertification, or referring new clients based on their own experience with the program.

Even before marketing we needed an internet presence. A webpage, still in use all these years, was created, actually written in HTML, way before the days of do-it-yourself and what-you-see-is-what-you get programs. Chris Jackson designed the CruiseMasters logo. And brochures were designed and printed.

Clients came from the San Juan Islands to the north, Olympia to the south, from Lake Sammamish to the east, Port Townsend to the west. Clients still keep in touch, describing their new adventures, celebrating their mastering of boat handling, or asking follow up questions.

Coaching, enabling, has been a real joy. To experience a client’s “Aha” is both humbling and made it all so worthwhile. We didn’t produce just skill; we strove to produce confidence. And a big plus is simply introducing folk to the experience of being on the water, the richness, the joy, and yes, even the spirituality of life on the water, especially here on the Salish Sea we call our home and those waters beyond.

All this started, at least in recent history, with June and me, and our high school freshman daughter, Lindsay, living aboard our classic wooden Lady Mick on Seattle’s Lake Union. As a post-retirement lark, in 2012 I studied and qualified for my US Coast Guard 100-ton Master’s License. From there it got serious, instructing at a boat leasing company on Elliot Bay, then being hired by Argosy Cruises to skipper the MV Sightseer for the Lake Union-to-downtown-Pier 57 lock’s tour. And then came CruiseMasters.

Now my Master’s ticket is soon to expire, with fourscore and three years behind me, my body reminding me that I’m not as agile as I think I should be, roading in our motorhome (yes, it is an Airstream, a “Land Yacht, go figure) opening up even newer adventures. it seems prudent to retire my nameboard and tie up. All suggest a time to close this log.

To all, and there are thousands of you out there, who helped make CruiseMasters a very credible and valuable part of our boating environment, thank you!

It has been a fantastic cruise!

Peace,

Mike

CruiseMasters is a program of