The New Ocean 37’ - How It All Started
John Leek III came into my office the other morning and stood in the doorway with his coffee. “Mike, you know those old Merritts? Nice fishing boats, that’s all you need, something comfortable just to get you out there. And if you need to stay over night, you can”, he says. “You hear this kind of dock talk quite a bit. When one goes by, everybody’s head turns. Even the guys on 60 footers”, he adds. “I think Johnny (John Leek IV or J4 as we call him) has an idea.” He’ll be over later to talk about it. A couple of hours later J4 and Terence Watson are sitting in my office saying they might have a little project for me. Then after about an hour of chit-chat and some what-ifs there was a moment of silence and then… “Well, do you want to do it?” Of course I did. “Yeah, but it has to be done right”, I can remember J4 saying. Then the three of us agreed to spend a couple of weeks jotting down any ideas we could come up with and gathering all the information we could possibly find. And I was to start some preliminary plans using some of J4’s thoughts and specifications. We would meet again in two weeks. After they left my office I can remember telling myself, “Finally, something different that no one else is doing”.