Back in 1990, I was fresh out of a gap year following high school, bouncing from friend’s couch to friend’s couch and desperately in need of a rudder. I’d picked up sailing that year from my father, who had remarried—the sailboat came with the marriage. Like most anything I become interested in, I became wildly obsessed. But my friends were getting wearisome of me taking advantage of their goodwill. I needed a job.
I started with the local newspaper’s help-wanted ads. Buried down deep was a nugget of gold that would chart the course for the rest of my life. A local ship’s chandlery—Fawcett Boat Supplies in Annapolis, Maryland—was looking for a salesperson. I had little experience in sales, but I didn’t let that stop me.
I called the shop and spoke to Bill Griffin, the manager. He told me to pop in the next day around 10 a.m. I arrived early, and Griffin sat me down and had me fill out an application. When I was finished, we talked a lot about my restaurant experience from my work at Marriott. I’d managed a couple of company restaurants, and I told Griffin about Marriott’s culture of customer service. He was concerned that I’d only recently started sailing, but it seemed to be a plus that my father and I spent a lot of time on the water crabbing and fishing.
I went in a week later and had a second interview with the store’s wholesale manager, Tim Newell. He asked many of the same questions but was more pointed in asking about my meager sailing experience. “I am a fast learner and a hard worker,” I told him.
Two days later, I got a call from Griffin, who hired me at $9.75 an hour. “We’re going to pair you with one of our best salesmen, and you will shadow him for a few of months leading up to the busy season before we set you loose on your own.”
I completed the internship and quickly picked up knowledge about everything from marine head joker valves and repair kits to shore power components and battery chargers. I learned the company’s service philosophy, which revolved around having the right solutions delivered by knowledgeable staff who knew how to put most any sort of boat system together on the fly.
In the following decade, I was promoted regularly, holding positions such as the store’s rigger, sailboat hardware aisle lead and merchandiser. I eventually landed a position in the wholesale office, which provided a Monday-through-Friday desk job with around 200 marinas, boatyards and boatbuilders as my customers. I loved it.
In 2001, I used one of those wholesale relationships to land a job as a book salesperson and shipper at Waterway Guide, a cruising publication. It was a downgrade in terms of title and pay, but I had bigger things in mind.
Once I’d shown them that I wasn’t a complete Muppet, I started updating the marina listings for the five guides. Then I picked up scanning the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration charts that would be placed in the publications. After that, following some serendipitous staff departures, I was promoted to associate editor. By the time I left in 2010, when the publication moved to Deltaville, Virginia, I was managing editor.
A few years later, I went on my own dime to the Miami International Boat Show to dig up story assignments and meet magazine editors face-to-face. It was there that I made a point to cold-call elevator pitch Bill Sisson, who at the time was the editor of this magazine. “I can write about fishing and destinations and do boat reviews,” I told Sisson at a Scout Boats press conference.
The rest, so to say, is history. I freelanced for Soundings and other titles in the group’s collection until 2017, when editor Mary South brought me on as senior editor. Though I absolutely loved the team and work I did at Soundings, I was hunting for an editor-in-chief chip to put on my resume. When Sisson invited me to be editor-in-chief of sister publication Soundings Trade Only, I took it without hesitation.
Almost five years later, it’s time for another transition. When I found out Soundings editor-in-chief Jeanne Craig was leaving to run Yachting, I put my name in the hat. While I’ve enjoyed reporting on the marine trade, Soundings has always felt like a happy place to me, both as a freelance writer and a staff editor. I look forward to expressing my love for boats and the sea in these pages from this issue onward. It’s like coming home.
Gary Reich gary.reich@firecrown.com
This article was originally published in the September 2026 issue.
