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Crew Unlimited History |
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1983 |
Richard “Nord” Peterson opened the “first” yacht crew agency, Crew Unlimited, registered as Yacht Counsellors of America, Inc. doing business as Crew Unlimited. (There is some debate from Linda at Crewfinders as to whether they opened first, and our research hasn't successfully proved either way.) |
1986 |
Nord Peterson sold the company to Captain Eddie Seesholts, a retiring merchant marine and yacht Captain, and a dear ‘old Salt.’ |
1987 |
Opened a seasonal office in Newport, Rhode Island for the first time. |
Feb 1993 |
Ami Griffith came to work for Captain Eddie as a 'Girl Friday,' while looking for her ‘ideal’ stewardess job, (2nd Stew, 140’+, charter only, summer only, in the Med) to cover the office so he could go to doctors' appointments, get his car to the shop etc. |
June 1993 |
Captain Eddie went on vacation with his wife Goharik, to New Orleans, for the month, leaving Ami in charge of the office. Upon their return, he was sick, and a week later was admitted into the hospital. While he was there, having none of his own children, he told Ami ‘Girl, I love ya, you’re doing a great job, and I want you to take over the business.’ Ami responded, “We can talk about that when you get back to the office.” He was diagnosed with lung and liver cancer, and was taken off life support on July 14th. He was 69, even though he’d told everyone he was 87! There was $12,000 in the account, and less than $20,000 in receivables. Goharik added Ami onto the bank account, and Ami gave her $6,000, agreeing to keep the business running on the remainder plus the receivables, until the money ran out, as a gesture at keeping Captain Eddie’s legacy alive. |
Oct 1993 |
Goharik Seesholts added Ami Griffith to the stock certificate as a ‘joint tenant with rights to survivorship’ so that if anything happened to her, the business would pass to Ami, and Ami paid Goharik monthly for the next several years. |
June 1994 |
Crew Unlimited opened the Newport office above the Post Office. This office would open June through September for the next several years, until the terrorist attack of 9/11 changed the security procedures in the building, forcing a change of location in 2003. |
Mar 1996 |
Ami Griffith married Paul Williams, a yacht Engineer from Wales, and changed her name to Ami G. Williams. |
June 1997 |
Crew Unlimited opened an office in Seattle, Washington, on Lake Union, which would serve the Pacific Northwest for the following two summers. |
Nov 1997 |
Named Most Valuable Player of the Association of Yachting Professionals |
Apr 1998 |
Lobbying with the assistance of the Association of Yachting Professionals, assisted Mark Fry of International Yachtmaster Training to obtain authority from the RYA to teach a yachtmaster course in Fort Lauderdale. A year or so later, Ami testified against Mark Fry on behalf of Maritime Professional Training, leading to the reversal of IYT’s trademark of the common term “yachtmaster.” The trademark had made it illegal for other schools to use the term in their advertising and in their coursework. |
Sept 1998 |
As a charter member of the Association of Yachting Professionals, Ami worked closely with Chuck Bortell to create the first fully comprehensive medical insurance policy specifically designed to meet the needs of yacht crew, and became licensed to sell yacht crew medical insurance to individuals and entire crews. |
Dec 1998 |
Being aware of the MCA Code of Practice for Commercial Yachts coming into effect, requiring USCG licensed Captains to obtain an MCA Endorsement to continue operating the Cayman Registered yachts they were employed upon, Crew Unlimited and Bluewater - Antibes approached Maritime Professional Training to offer the first UK Business and Law course in the USA. |
Sept 1999 |
Due to the upcoming venture in NZ, and not wanting to risk losing anything that belonged to someone else, Ami requested a Buy/Sell agreement from Goharik, finally becoming sole owner of Yacht Counsellors of America dba Crew Unlimited. |
Oct 1999 |
Ami formed a joint venture with 37 South in Auckland, New Zealand, and moved to Auckland Oct through March, in support of the America’s Cup and to ring in the Millenium. |
Apr 2000 |
After years of barely more than breaking even, Crew Unlimited reached the conclusion that 50% of the first month’s salary, the standard placement fee across the industry, was the break even point. In a sink or swim decision, Crew Unlimited raised their rates to 6% of the annual starting salary, and created a 11% increase in profit the first year. This decision paved the way for crew agencies around the world to change their rates and warranty periods to whatever they felt suitable, de-structured the ‘price fix’ that had been in place since the beginning, helping to create a more competitive marketplace. |
Oct 2000 |
Looking to spend more time with her husband, Ami took a sabbatical from the agency and she and Paul joined the 165’ Perini Navi “Felicita West” for the final stages of the build. They then cruised Italy to Greece and back for her maiden voyage. Back in Italy, Ami slipped in her stocking feet (note - don’t do that) on the steps, and fractured her L1 vertebra, rendering her invalid until after Christmas. Ami re-joined in the Caribbean and finished the season in the Bahamas, returning to the office in April 2001. |
Oct 2001 |
Moved to a new office, more than twice the size of the previous office, and hired two new Placement Coordinators. The larger office and additional employees enabled us to divide the crew into three categories, Captains, Chefs and Teams; Mates, Engineers, and Deckhands; and Stews and Chief Stews. This meant that the three Placement Coordinators would place only their category of crew, getting to know their particular candidates better in the process. |
May 2002 |
Feeling the need to go green, before ‘green’ was trendy, Crew Unlimited launched their new website, enabling crew the ability to register their profiles online, search for jobs online, and eliminating the need for paper files, resumes, and updates, which helped us to ensure submitting accurate information. This reduced our paper consumption greatly, allowed us to recover the space taken up by 14 vertical filing cabinets, and streamlined our administrative process saving thousands of dollars the first year. It also was the first website where crew could actually submit their interest in positions available, instead of simply reading a list of jobs that may or may not be available. Our new site also allowed clients to search for crew online, (but without disclosing contact information of the crew until we've confirmed their interest and availability) which allowed our clients faster response to their crew requests. This innovation allowed our company to grow our market share due to the added efficiency of not having to file paper files each day, scan resumes, fax, etc, and freed up those resources to hire a full time reference checking clerk. |
Aug 2002 |
After several years of long distance relationship, Ami and Paul agree to get divorced, but remain friends today. |
Oct 2005 |
Acknowledging that it's 'the crew that makes the charter,' Ami expanded the company to a new market - C U Yacht Charters, offering retail charter brokerage services to high net worth clients, and wholesale charter marketing Central Agency services to yacht owners. With the new department, we expanded our website to allow guests who've chartered before, to search our site for the yacht that crew member is currently working on board, so they can charter with them again! |
| Dec 2005 |
Appreciating that most of our clients and crew are referred to us by 'word of mouth' we created our 'Share the Wealth' referral program, which allows crew to receive a Thank You each time we place someone that they referred to us. |
Sept 2006 |
Ami re-married, this time to Jacksonville, FL native, Greg Ira, at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel in Georgia, becoming Ami G. Ira. |
May 2007 |
Further website development allowed 'automatic' resume submission, where our Placement Coordinators can specify that a candidate be submitted to a client as soon as they confirm their interest on line, instead of waiting for the next business day to send the resume. This has helped us to deliver resumes more efficiently to our clients. |
Oct 2007 |
As an added service to our clients, we formed an agreement with Wackenhut Background checking services to be able to offer International criminal background checks for all our crew upon request. |
| Oct 2007 |
With the increase in popularity of cell phone text use, we added the possibility for crew to receive text message notifications when a new job is posted, thus making it easier for crew to know when to visit our job list to confirm their interest. |
Oct 2007 |
Further website development enabled crew to upload a personal video interview for their online profiles, which can be viewed by the clients they've been submitted to. This recorded interview gives the client a much deeper insight into the person they're considering for their open position, and helps the candidate make a better impression than their resume alone. |
Feb 2008 |
Recognizing that yacht crew have generally creative, resourceful, and active personalities, we decided to offer them an opportunity to showcase their talents and skills, as well as share their experiences working on yachts, with the production of the Fort Yachtie Da Film Festival. This festival is a culmination of a year long competition between yacht crew to produce 5 minute short films, in various categories, to win prize money plus our authentic "Oscar Fish" trophies. Our mission with the film festival is to promote teamwork, creativity, stimulation, competition, commitment, and discipline by getting the whole crew involved in the production; some as actors & actresses, camera men, screen play writers, and editors. The result of this collaboration will be an entertaining short film that paints a picture of 'life in yachting', as seen through the eyes of a yachtie. Longer term, this will result in a reduction of crew turnover in the yachting industry, thus emproving the overall yacht ownership experience. |
April 2009 |
Acknowledging that a vast majority of the industry's crew members are European or are legal to work in the EU, we opened our office in the center of the yachting industry in Antibes, France. This new office affords us the opportuntity to meet face to face with the crew we register, which helps the placement coordinators in both our offices to know better the crew we're representing. |
April 2010 |
After watching the Bernie Madoff saga unfold, we realized that references are the #1 most valuable asset anyone has, as they speaks to a person's integrity and past performance. With that in mind, we committed ourselves to digging deeper, and created our '110% Money Back No Bad Apple Guarantee.' This guarantee assures our clients that they'll never hire a known bad apple through us. |
| Nov 2010 |
Local Knowledge section launched - this section allows our users to list/nominate good companies that they've done business with before, and give them rave reviews, to help these companies succeed and to help other industry professionals receive good service. It also gives users the opportunity to give bad reviews to companies that they feel didn't provide the level of service warranted in this industry, hoping to inspire those companies to improve so that owners enjoy ownership longer. |
coming soon |
Mentorship Advisory Board - Because everyone needs a Mentor, and because once you're the Captain you are at the top of the ladder, we decided to create a program where our registered Captains can consult with our hand picked board of reputable and accomplished Captains on a double-blind email basis, where contact info is kept confidential so there is no risk to the person asking advice. The goal of the program is to help Captains manage issues on board, professionally, without risk of losing their job to another Captain. |
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