Undeterred by a shipwreck in 14m seas with winds to 96 knots, for which the rescuing Courtmacsherry Lifeboat crew received the RNLI Bronze Medal, they rebuilt their boat and continued a voyage which ranged between Portugal and the Baltic.

Faced with a return to their former lives, they instead set up the first Boatshed.com business in Milford Haven in the summer of 1999. When approached by an interested party they sold that business and established another using the same formula in Ireland. The cycle repeated itself and after selling a third business in Gibraltar, they called in the expert advisors to establish the system of partner-owned businesses, which is about to open the 28^th Boatshed.com and American headquarters in Sarasota, Florida.

The success of Boatshed.com is down to a lot of hard work and a highly evolved software which creates and supports a standard website set-up for each territorial partner. Partners buy a license plus a training and support package which enables them to present boats on their own website in a successful format. The only brokerage to personally visit and photograph every boat it lists, Boatshed.com presents detailed specifications, the broker’s comments and up to 70 photographs of each vessel. Full technically correct translations into five languages are available with the click of a mouse. Buyers visiting a partner website can view all of the 1,500 boats currently listed across the network. Some 130,000 potential buyers are currently signed up, with their viewing history maintained by a sophisticated customer management system.

Boatshed.com is currently turning down more boats than it can list for lack of local partners, so there are global ambitions to have a Boatshed.com in every port. Partnerships tag comfortably onto existing marine businesses. Although the early emphasis has been on leisure craft, Boatshed.com websites now include a section of commercial vessel listings and the presence of the Gosport based founders at Seawork 2007 is a measure of their determination to make further progress in the workboat sector.