Neil is onboard his 41 foot ketch Supertaff crossing the Atlantic.

Last night we had forty knots over the deck and Supertaff was surfing down steep Atlantic seas at around ten knots. A noisy, confused, muscular sea. You stay focused because you have to, not because you feel brave. Offshore, the skipper’s job is to absorb the fear so the rest of the boat doesn’t have to. You keep your head straight because everyone else relies on you to do exactly that.

And in my case, fear has a specific origin. Two years before I started Boatshed, the same boat, Supertaff, went through a full 360-degree rollover in the Bay of Biscay. Proper conditions: around fifteen-metre seas, ninety knots of wind, and no good options. When she rolled, both masts went. Deck gear was bent or torn away. Several windows blew out. The interior flooded and the boat sat half full of water. We were three onboard, and the only outcome that really matters is that all three of us survived.

The rescue was high-profile, as these things tend to be when a boat is upside-down in Biscay. And afterwards came the long bit nobody ever sees: the salvage, the rebuild, the slow, methodical process of putting the boat back together piece by piece. I did most of that work myself. Long days. A lot of learning. No heroics. Just the simple decision that the boat still had a future and I wasn’t done with her.

That experience doesn’t fade. It sits quietly in the mind, not as drama, but as a phobia you learn to manage so it doesn’t interfere with the next decision. When Supertaff starts thundering down a wave at night with spray everywhere, the memory flicks on like an internal warning light. You feel it, then you push it down and focus on what needs doing. That is leadership offshore. And, as I learned later, it is leadership on land as well: acknowledge the fear, suppress the noise, keep moving.

After the rollover, I didn’t run from boats. I went the other way. I still wanted to live afloat and find a way of making it sustainable. I looked at everything from catering to music to odd boat jobs. I even considered buying a brokerage in Spain and sailing down to run it, before realising that my Spanish was terrible and the price was worse.

Then Lawrence appeared with a small brokerage in Milford Haven. Five thousand pounds and a small slice for the first year. A deal that was possible rather than aspirational. Milford Haven gets dismissed as “not a proper yachting destination”, but that’s industry perception talking. The reality was different: good people, a working harbour, boats being used rather than displayed. It suited me fine.

What I wasn’t prepared for was distance. Milford Haven is brilliant but remote. And buyers don’t travel for uncertainty. That was the first problem. The second was my wiring. I had never sold anything in my life and had no appetite for performance or polish. The brokerage world expected you to talk boats up. I wasn’t prepared to downplay flaws in case someone drove hours and found a different reality on arrival.

The conversations went like this:
“Well Neil, if the boat’s as bad as you say, I won’t bother coming.”

Not hostility. Just logic. Buyers hate ambiguity. And I was terrified of creating it. So I over-corrected in the other direction.

The turning point came almost by accident. I started taking photos. Lots of them. Dozens at a time. Developed at the chemist. Posted out to anyone interested. Not a strategy, just the only honest way I knew to give people the full picture without overselling or underselling anything.

And everything changed. People came. Offers were made. Boats sold. Not because I convinced anyone, but because the uncertainty was gone. The information did the work. My job became facilitation rather than persuasion.

That moment in a tiny office in Milford Haven became the basis of the Boatshed model. Transparency beats theatre. Detail beats patter. Show reality early and people can move without fear.

And offshore, in forty knots, it’s the same principle: suppress the noise, surface the truth, and stay functional.

Note from Neil:
CEO@Sea is my way of using this Atlantic crossing to tell the truth about how I ended up running Boatshed. It isn’t a masterclass. It’s just the lived reality of how entrepreneurship actually happens: one decision, one mistake, one moment of clarity at a time. Boatshed grew out of that mindset, not a business plan. And if any of this way of thinking resonates, the opportunities at BoatshedBusiness.com are open to anyone who wants to build something of their own, in their own way. No pitch. Just an open door.