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ABOUT US
The Nanaimo Yacht Services @ Stones Boatyard management team comes from more than 30 years of delivering top quality charter holidays for the world’s leading yacht charter company, Sunsail. Between them they ran the Caribbean, European, Mediterranean, Indian Ocean yacht charter and watersports club operations.
Originally from Zimbabwe and South Africa, Shari MacPherson and husband Ian, a licensed diesel and gas mechanic, built and launched an Endurance 40 ketch and then spent ten years cruising, traveling as far as the Caribbean where from 1983 Shari ran a day-charter boat operation and Ian managed Sunsail’s Caribbean operations including 250 yachts spread around 7 islands. In 1993 Sunsail enticed the couple, with their four young daughters, to Greece where they were responsible for 370 yachts, 5 watersports club hotels and hundreds of staff. Ian at this time wrote and developed the maintenance manual for Sunsail’s Mediterranean fleet.
At the turn of the millennium on leaving Europe, Ian and Shari opened Sunsail’s charter base in Vancouver and then in 2007 decided to branch out on their own with the purchase of Nanaimo Yacht Charters & Sailing School, bringing with them a new range of Beneteau and Catalina yachts. They immediately saw an opportunity to utilize Ian’s training, experience and skills in boat maintenance on Vancouver Island and started Nanaimo Yacht Services. Ian, now a CYA Yachtmaster Ocean, ISPA Yachtmaster Offshore and an ISPA Instructor Evaluator also teaches celestial navigation when he’s allowed a couple of weeks off.
Lorraine Bell, also from Zimbabwe, has a background in sales and marketing and ran a large employment business in South Africa and Ontario before moving to Nanaimo to become part of the management team, concentrating on our sailing school and assisting with the development of the business particularly on buying Stones Boatyard in early 2010.
Nick Webster has spent his entire career associated with the sea and boats initially as a naval officer in the Royal Navy and the Sultan of Oman’s Navy. In 1986 he became a senior manager and later a director of Sunsail where he managed and developed yacht charter areas and watersports facilities around the world. He also set-up and ran a shipping operation to transport Sunsail yachts between the Mediterranean and the Caribbean.
Between 1999 and 2005 he was Commercial Director of a UK based boat shipping company, Peters & May, the world leader in this niche global market. At this time Nick used various specialist boat cleaning services to renovate boats stained during shipping and in the summer of 2005 he emigrated from southern England to B.C. to operate his own boat cleaning business, Pro Boat Clean in Western Canada. He joined his old colleagues, Ian and Shari, at Nanaimo Yacht Services @ Stones Boatyard in the summer of 2010.
Robert Hess, a well known licensed technician and published author, leads our mechanical, electrical and electronic repair and installation yacht services team. As a mechanic and boat owner Robert has worked all over Canada and is an acknowledged expert in maintenance of small boat engines, particularly Universal Atomic Four’s. What he doesn’t know about yacht and boat systems he’ll research for you and pass on his notes!
