How many light years is that, one wonders. A fair few, going by story of Lee Marine, completing its 10th year of operations on Phuket. As Managing Director Josh Lee related, the industry has come a phenomenal distance from where it was.

Lee Marine began quite small, and almost by chance, all those years back. Josh having sailed the world on his boat was looking to sell it, and realised that there were no yacht sales agencies.

He realised the tremendous potential of Phuket's marine industry, and the Lee Marine yacht sales office dropped anchor at the Boat Lagoon in February 1997.
“As soon as I put the word out that I was starting a yacht sales company about a hundred boats registered with us,” recalls Josh. “The financial crisis that year meant that a great number of boats came on sale.”

Lee Marine had taken off. The place was right, the timing was fortuitous. Serendipity, you might say.

Ten years on, it's hard to imagine the Boat Lagoon board walk bereft of the flourishing yacht sales offices that are now such a prominent feature, but as Josh assures us, “There was not much at all here. It was all brand new, except for a couple of boat charter companies that were starting up.”

It hasn't all been smooth sailing. Josh and his partner Martin, who joined him a few months into the start of the company worked against a number of odds. Prime among these was the telephonic and electronic backwardness of Phuket. “We couldn't even get enough telephone lines to work with.

“I can remember vividly walking up and down Phuket town, day in and day out trying to get Internet connections.”

Being a mainly Internet based company, with buyers from all over the world including America and Australia, the main hurdle they faced was emailing their customers, with preposterously slow Internet connections at the time. “We were constantly plugging our one telephone line into the net and then having to unplug whenever we needed to make calls,” Josh reminisces, shaking his head.

The lack of skilled labour was another major impediment. Whenever there was a professional job to be done, a sail to be mended or a part fixed, the Lee Marine team found there was just no one skilled enough to carry it off. So how did they cope? “By doing it all ourselves - we just had to learn to do whatever was needed. The standard of our service had to be nothing short of excellent.”

A monumental sales tax of 217% on the marine industry didn't make matters any easier either. The government, in 2004, dropped the tax to...7%. A small difference of only 210%.

The result for the marine industry is out there for all to see. And Josh is as confident about Phuket today as he was back then. The boating lifestyle thing is a huge attraction for tourists and locals are also beginning to cultivate the sport and hobby, he says. From yacht sales to charters to boat trips, the yachting industry earns a lot of money for Phuket.

“The facilities in Phuket have come from being poor to the best in South East Asia. They are better than even Singapore. It's vastly different from what it was ten years ago.”