The first year almost finished us. One storm flooded the lower section of our storage lot, a customer disputed a repair he had approved in writing, and a forklift we had bought used developed a hydraulic leak the week before three boats needed lifting. We were working thirteen-hour days and still sometimes paying ourselves last. More than once I stood outside the shed after midnight wondering whether my mother had been right to suggest a stable job with health insurance. Then Ray would get an engine running, Sam would bring me a corrected schedule, and the next customer would arrive because somebody had heard we were the people who answered when other shops did not.
Our first rental contract was so badly written that a customer's attorney called it creative fiction with numbers. The attorney was Peter Nolan, a thin, sharp-eyed man with an office near downtown Wilmington and a talent for making painful information sound almost entertaining. We met because Ray repaired Peter's father's fishing boat after a storm, and Peter offered to look through our paperwork as a thank-you. He returned the pages covered in red ink and told me, "Mark, if a sneeze had liability, this contract would still lose." I liked him immediately, which says something about the sort of man I was at twenty-nine.
Peter helped us form a proper company, establish clear ownership records, separate business accounts from personal spending, and create contracts that could survive contact with an actual lawyer. Ray and Sam each owned meaningful shares, while I held the largest stake because of the initial debt and the responsibilities I had taken on. We made decisions together about the big things and argued over the small things with the passion of men who had once shared a refrigerator containing nothing but mustard and cold pizza. No matter what happened later, those two never forgot where we started. Neither did I.
By the time I met Erica, Harborline had two storage lots, a service bay, about twenty employees, and seasonal arrangements with several yacht clubs. We were finally able to replace equipment before it failed instead of afterward, a luxury that is impossible to appreciate until you have spent years doing it the other way. We had a reputation for returning calls, admitting mistakes, and telling customers when a repair was not worth the money. The marina development contract near Wrightsville Beach was still ahead of us, but our business was real. I had the kind of tired satisfaction that comes from knowing the things you own were paid for with work rather than with somebody else's patience.
Erica and I met at a coastal hospitality fundraiser that I had attended only because one of our customers bought a table and then insisted I use the spare seat. I arrived late from a dock repair, wearing clean jeans and a navy shirt with a faint grease stain along