A ferry tale

He then continued to tell me he had a holiday house on the Island, travelled frequently, knew the trade well, knew the incumbent owners and declined to give us the loan.

Selling the kids was my preferred option, but unacceptable to my wife, so we had to go for hard finance for the balance of this fairly simply designed and simply specced vessel.

So, in December 2003, our new modern catamaran, the Seabreeze, with a quiet, modern coffee shop only 2.5m above the main deck, akimbo windows for children to watch the waves and flared ship sides to contain the spray, entered the harbour in competition to this monopoly.

GF and his team were openly laughing from their office tower at this new ferry, because "it only carried one lane of trucks". They still didn't get it!

For visiting overseas clients, I would take them across to the Island on GF's barge and then do the return trip on the Seabreeze. This wonderful chalk and cheese, page two marketing strategy, saw us winning two designs from a prominent Dutch group within 24 hours of the trip across the Bay.

Using the same strategy, we secured orders from Venezuela and Bahamas, then repeat orders.

As for the Seabreeze, anyone who liked a good coffee in a quiet lounge, or did not want salt spray on their vehicles, travelled on the "Big Red Cat" as she became known, attracting the majority of passengers and cars. We took the whole $6m profit from the incumbent in year one and I resisted the urge to put a framed photo of GF on the wall!

A few years later, a bus company came along with a big cheque for our ferry company. This was the closest I have ever come to kissing a guy! Not long after, the bus company then sold the company including Seabreeze to a public company, where at twenty-two years' old, she still operates, reportedly as the highest KPI performer in their extensive fleet.

There're two morals to this ferry tale. Firstly, sweating the assets is not a good strategy. In transport, whether a fleet of planes, buses or ferries, these assets should never be older than eighteen, maximum twenty.

Secondly, be prepared to give visiting sales reps at least fifteen minutes of your time, to hear if they can improve your company's bottom line. Resist the urge to be rude or dismissive of them, such as telling a rep to p...off or f...off.

They could just re-emerge and take your business away!