Who is the Boatman, and what is he on about anyway?

Hi.
My name is Peter Papageorgiou and this my third blog. My others are, a Greek one where I rant and rave or do a bit of reminiscing, and another, English language one, where I write about the music I like. And now the Boatman's Blog. I'll be honest. The idea, partly, behind this one, is to promote my business. The good things are, that my business has a lot of interesting aspects about it, and that I like what I do. So I hope I can keep this interesting.

What I hope to do is give some info about sailing and the lovely yachts we cater to, details on stuff that we sell and also some stories.

I'll start off with a little info on me and the shop.

I was born in Ilford, Essex, in 1967. English Mum, Greek Dad and a few years later, here I was, growing up in Corfu, the sunny isle where my parents originally met.
I first went sailing on a boat that belonged to a friend of my dad's from Finland called Marty. We set off from the Marina in Gouvia, it must have been sometime in the late seventies. The quay was about a meter wide then and the rest of the space was like a desert, dusty and hot. You could count the boats on the fingers of both hands at best...
Fast forward to 1985, when my dad sold the few remaining rental cars he had and set up a chandlery in the old port, Corfu with a friend of his. This was Force 5 Marine, and to this day many people, especially those who have been here a while, call me Force 5 Pete...

I worked there from 1988, having just finished my National Service, until 1992. The tension of working with family got the better of us and I left to pursue another career, albeit never far from boats. I worked in the charter industry as a base manager, delivered a few yachts, did one skippered charter, and a LOT of boatyard work and maintenance on both charter and private yachts. This gave me a fair working knowledge of many things I had only been selling till then, which has benefited both me and, I believe, my customers over the years. In 1995 I started my second attempt to work in the family business, only to leave again in 1998, and start my own chandlery.

The shop started out in Kontokali, just outside the marina, in small premises in 1998. The next year saw us add the next door shop to our space too. In 2001, the need to change the company form, prompted a move to yet larger premises. For a while the we even had two big shops almost next door to each other, but we have since downsized slightly, at least as far as square meters are concerned. The move also resulted in a change of name, so we are now known, as Boatman's World. Under this name we have flourished and I am not ashamed to say , been given the nickname "East Marine" by some of our customers, in reference to the well known US mail order firm. Obviously we don't stock as much, but we have a lot of things and there is always new stuff coming in...

Actually in 1998, when I had just started the shop, an old customer, asked me: "What's it gonna be, Pete? A chandlery or a yachtie boutique?" And the choice was made there and then. A chandlery it was to be!

Right I'm going to wrap this up somewhere here. Next posts, some reminiscing from the job, and about the lovely people we generally get to meet while on it. Not to mention their beautiful boats!!