Publisher’s Letter

Letter from the Publisher

Welcome to Best4Boats.com, a new digital media outlet built by boaters for boaters like you. In order to help you get to know me better I will try to explain how this all came to be.

According to my mother Evie, I was boating when I could barely walk. She started our family’s boating madness when she secretly bought my father a Lido 14 sailboat for his 30^th birthday. I was only a few years old. My father came home from work and the boat was in the driveway on a trailer. Surprise! He had never sailed in his life, but the agreement to buy the boat came with sailing lessons from Bob up the street. From that day on, he was a sailor. Not only did he learn to sail, but boating became an intricate part of our whole family’s lifestyle. He took me and my older brother out on the boat in Lake Michigan when I was still in diapers. That made my mother so nervous she insisted he get a small outboard for the boat. I still have that vintage Johnson 2HP sitting in a garage in Ballard. 

The Lido was named “4 The Fun of It,” but a year later, when my younger brother was born, it became “5 the Fun of It,” which I didn’t understand till much later. My mother’s impulse purchase changed everything. Boating is now deeply ingrained in our family. At the time of my father’s untimely death many years ago, he and my mom had retired and were living onboard a 43’ cutter cruising the Caribbean. After he was gone, she sold the big boat and moved on land, but she always had boats, albeit smaller ones. My mother eventually passed too at her home-on-pond, but both my brothers and I continue to own boats. Aside from the myriad of kayaks, canoes, paddleboards, and dinghies, we have all accumulated, my oldest brother and his wife own a unique catboat ideal for cruising in the river they live along. My younger brother and his wife recently bought a 25’ Oday sailboat to explore New England onboard. My wife, my two sons, and my dog can often be found cruising aboard a Sabreline 36 in the Salish Sea and into Canada. Because of that one act of buying a small boat many years ago, our family boating tradition lives on, and my sons, as boaters and sailors, are continuing the journey.

Not only is boating a lifelong passion for me but I somehow managed to turn boating and the water into my livelihood. My father told me that one of the keys to a happy life is to figure out how to support yourself while doing something you like. For me, that is boating. I went from teaching sailing to running boats, to selling marine electronics, to marine publishing, writing, and marketing. During all my boating exploits and through all the different marine-related jobs I have had, I’ve read, watched, listened to, and participated in a lot of marine-related media. Some of it has been fantastic, and some commercialized crap. My goal in creating Best4Boats.com is to offer a place where boaters and people who want to experience boating can get information about all kinds of topics related to the water. It sounds cliché, but I think we can do a better job. I say “we” now because I certainly can’t do this alone. The we includes the team being built here at best4boats, like our award-winning editor Norris Comer and Dawn Anderson who makes everything work. Still, it also includes you, the reader, the boater, and the industry professional. Please join us!

In our focus on being the best, we embrace other great boating resources. We want to include them and point our readers to them for different voices and worthwhile perspectives. We welcome sailors and powerboaters alike. We intend to be the place where boaters go for information about all types of boats, equipment, and interesting topics and stories related to the waterways and oceans. Our motto, “Informed and Afloat,” sums it up. Come along for the ride, sign up for our newsletter, and please provide us feedback on this endeavor. 

Enjoy the water!
Arnie Hammerman
publisher@best4boats.com