FineEdge.com

Mark is the Publisher at Fine Edge with responsibility for all publishing, business affairs, and marketing. He is also the co-author of Cruising the Virgin Islands and the new Editor and Publisher of the annual Waggoner Cruising Guide.

Mark's boating experience began in Ocean City, New Jersey, where at the age of 15 he started working in a marina learning how to repair boats and engines. During this period he raced both power and sailboats in the waters around Ocean City.

He has always enjoyed boating and while working in the corporate world he annually would charter in the San Juan Islands and British Columbia as well as other places around the world including the Caribbean, the Bahamas, the Greek islands, Honduras, Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay area.

In 2002, while in the middle of a successful professional career as a business strategy and marketing consultant for companies such as IBM, Apple, Intel and many of the major media companies in the world, Mark elected to make a career and life-style change with a move from working in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley to the Pacific Northwest and Anacortes, Washington. He purchased nautical publisher Fine Edge, with the objective of combining his business experience with his interest in boating. He has expanded Fine Edge through the development of new nautical titles and the acquisition of the U.S. publishing and distribution rights for the popular Dreamspeaker line of six cruising guides covering the northwest and British Columbia waters.

Next, Mark expanded the reach of Fine Edge into the Caribbean with the first new cruising guide for the Virgin Islands in 15 years, Cruising the Virgin Islands, as co-author with the late Joe Russell. The 1st edition of this book was a sellout success. The expanded 2nd edition, and a new Virgin Islands Trip Planning Map, continue to be a big success and the book is now the standard guide for most of the major charter companies in the Virgin Islands.

Recently, Mark acquired the rights to the annual Waggoner Cruising Guide, the most popular cruising guide in the Northwest and British Columbia. The Waggoner is often referred to as – the "bible" for Northwest cruising. Mark is the new Editor and Publisher spending each summer visiting over 175 marinas, coastal towns, and anchorages for the most current information for northwest yachts and cruisers. He is expanding the Waggoner Guide to Ketchikan, Alaska and adding new apps on the Apple iPad and Android systems.

In addition to the Waggoner Cruising Guide, Mark has expanded Fine Edge to provide distribution of the top 150 cruising and boating books of interest to over 125 stores in the Northwest, British Columbia and Alaska. Recently, Fine Edge added seafood cookbooks to its distribution, which sell very well next to cruising guides.

Mark is also one of the principles of Fine Edge Nautical Seminars presenting nautical training and information courses at the Seattle Boat Show through Seattle Boat Show University, which he founded, and their annual Cruising the Inside Passage and Alaska, 3 day seminars, presented each spring.

In addition to new books, maps, and training seminars, Mark shoots for photo assignments and writes magazine articles on exciting cruising destinations that have been published in Power Cruising, Pacific Yachting, Latitudes and Attitudes, Soundings, and Dockside. He is a regular contributor to Northwest Yachting Magazine. His more recent charter cruising assignments have taken him to Kodiak, Alaska, Southeast Alaska, Haida Gwaii, Baja, the canals of France, and up the Intracoastal Waterway from Florida to Annapolis. In 2006, Mark lead the first American crew to charter cruise the coast of Vietnam which was chronicled in several magazines.

In addition to Fine Edge, Mark is the principal at Burrows Bay Associates providing Marketing, Strategy and Business Architecture consulting services to yacht builders and companies in the boating business, real estate developers and luxury goods companies.

Mark holds a U.S. Coast Guard Masters license with endorsements for towing and sail, and is a NAUI certified scuba diver. In addition to boating, Mark is an instrument rated, twin-engine private pilot with over 2000 hours of flight time. He is a long distance cyclist, recently completing his second Seattle to Portland (STP) cycling event. He is the 2011 President of the Anacortes Chamber of Commerce, the founder of the Anacortes Library Maritime Speakers Program and a leader of the Anacortes Futures Project to develop the plan for Anacortes in 2025. Mark is a past trustee of the Northwest Marine Trade Association (NMTA) and is the Chairman of the NMTA's Boat Show Committee in 2010-2012 responsible for planning the Seattle Boat Show.

Prior to his career shift to the nautical industry, Mark's past included creative and management positions in media, publishing and technology in New York, Los Angeles and the San Jose and San Francisco Bay areas as an award winning Producer, Director, Writer and Creative Director. He has been a consultant on media and technology for many of the major media companies around the world on the application and new business models for digital media. His consulting clients have included Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Disney, Sony Pictures, MGM, the International Motion Picture Association, and the Weather Channel/Landmark Communications to name a few. Prior to purchasing Fine Edge, he held a senior management position at Intel in their new business division and worldwide internet marketing division. Prior to Intel, Mark was a Managing Director in the Entertainment and Media practice for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Los Angeles serving the publishing, television and motion picture industry and the Vice President of Marketing and Sales for a joint venture of Apple and IBM. He is the author of several books, magazine articles and white papers and frequently has been a speaker on digital rights and media and technology issues around the world. Mark is the former Chairman of the Interactive Multimedia Association in Washington, D.C. and a former member of the Board of Directors for the Software Publishers Association. Over the years he has served on the boards of a number of companies and civic organizations. Mark is a graduate of Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey with a degree in business and communications.

FineEdge founders and authors Don Douglass and Réanne Hemingway-Douglass have sailed from 60° N to 56° S latitude—Alaska to Cape Horn—logging more than 150,000 miles of offshore cruising over the past 25 years. They consider the cruising grounds of Northwest and Alaska some of the finest in the world and an unending source of excitement and pleasure. They spend summers cruising on their diesel trawler, Baidarka.

Don Douglass began exploring Northwest waters in 1949 as a youth. He has sailed the Inside Passage on everything from a 26-foot pleasure craft and commercial fishing boats to a Coast Guard icebreaker. Don holds a BSEE degree from California State University, Pomona, and a Masters in Business Economics from Claremont Graduate University. He is the author of Exploring Vancouver Island's West Coast and, with his wife, Réanne, co-authored the acclaimed Exploring the Inside Passage to Alaska, Exploring the South Coast of British Columbia, Exploring the North Coast of British Columbia and Exploring the San Juan and Gulf Islands. Don holds honorary membership in the International Association of Cape Horners. He has written several skiing and mountainbiking guidebooks and, as a father of the sport, was elected to the Mountain Biking Hall of Fame.

Réanne Hemingway-Douglass holds a BA degree in French from Pomona College. She attended Claremont Graduate University and the University of Grenoble, France. Sailor, writer, cyclist and language teacher, Réanne's articles have appeared in numerous outdoor magazines. Her best-selling book, Cape Horn: One Man's Dream, One Woman's Nightmare, describes pitchpoling in the Great Southern Ocean and has been published in French and Italian. In the 1980s, Réanne led the first women's bicycling team to cross Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America. She is also the principal author of Mountain Biking the Eastern Sierra's Best 100 Trails. Her articles have appeared in numerous outdoor magazines, including Pacific Yachting and Cruising World.

The Douglasses have documented nearly 5,000 anchor sites between Seattle and Glacier Bay and their series of detailed cruising guidebooks are acclaimed for setting a new standard.

Karel Doruyter, of Victoria, British Columbia, is a registered marine surveyor and has been a sailboat enthusiast for more than 30 years. During his lifetime he has designed, constructed and maintained boats for himself as well as for others. He has sailed his own boats in the coastal waters of Western Canada, the USA, and Australia as well as offshore. At present Doruyter sails a cruising catamaran he designed and built. He is the author of Sailboat Buyer's Guide.

Curt Epperson is a practicing maritime lawyer and also an avid sailor. His passion for the sea is evident in both his professional and personal life. Curt saw a need to help boaters stay organized and informed about the many legal aspects of their boats. Hence he developed the Keeping Your Boat Legal book and accompanying binder. Although the legal profession can be intimidating, Curt wrote the Keeping Your Boat Legal book in a simple to read question and answer format to easily disseminate important information.

John Guzzwell, one of the world's great singlehanded sailors, was born in England and grew up in the Channel Islands where he spent most of his time on and around boats. John and his family were interned in Germany during World War II. Afterward, John learned the profession of boat joiner and then emigrated to British Columbia. At the age of 22, he began construction of Trekka, the boat in which he was to make his voyage around the world. John now makes his home in Seattle where he builds custom boats. He still sails, and recently completed the Singlehanded TransPac Race from San Francisco to Hawaii in Endangered Species, a half-scale model of a B.O.C. racing sailboat which he built himself. John is author of Trekka 'Round the World.

Bob Hale has been boating in the Northwest for most of his life. His early careers included editor of Nor'westing magazine and freelance photographer, and in 1981 he founded Robert Hale & Co. Inc., a manufacturer's rep business which he grew into the world's largest specialty wholesaler of nautical books.

Along with distributing books, Bob began writing and publishing reference guides for boating in the Northwest. In the early 1990's while researching early editions of his popular waypoint guides for the Northwest, the Weatherly Waypoint Guides, Vols. 1 & 2 (Volume 3 was published in 1998), Bob became frustrated with existing local boating guidebooks. In 1994, he produced the first Waggoner Cruising Guide. Now in its 17th year, The Waggoner has become the Northwest's best selling cruising guide. Bob spends 10 weeks a year cruising his 37-foot Tollycraft Surprise between Olympia, Washington and Prince Rupert, B.C., researching the Waggoner Cruising Guide.

Iain learned to sail at the age of nine, on a tiny lake in the middle of the prairies. He now lives on the north coast of British Columbia, care-taking a radio transmitter site on an island near Prince Rupert. For seven summers, along with his partner Kristin Miller and a little dog called Skipper, he explored the coast in an old naval whaler named Nid.

Nid, in some ways, changed his life. She turned him from a weekend sailor into a traveller, from a newspaper editor into a writer. He quit his job and started writing books the year he bought her, and achieved his first real success the year that he sold her.

Iain's book, Sea Stories of the Inside Passage, is a collection of stories about his travels in Nid. Iain now writes novels for children. His first, The Wreckers, has been translated into six languages.

Captain Kevin Monahan is a Canadian Coast Guard officer with over 20 years experience navigating the British Columbia coast as a small vessel captain. Born in London England in 1951, Monahan-now a resident of Victoria, B.C.-emigrated to Vancouver and attended the University of British Columbia. His articles have appeared in various magazines including Pacific Yachting, Northwest Yachting, and the Fisherman's News as well as in West Coast Fisherman which published a series of his articles on electronic navigation.

Captain Monahan was a fisherman for 12 years, after which he worked on ferries and coastal transports, before joining Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans as a patrol vessel captain. Captain Monahan is now an officer with the Canadian Coast Guard, having served the last five years in the Office of Boating Safety, first as Chief Investigator and then as Pacific Region Superintendent. He has testified in court as an expert witness in the navigational uses of GPS and is the principal author of GPS Instant Navigation, 2nd Edition and Proven Cruising Routes, Volume 1-Seattle to Ketchikan, The Radar Book and Local Knowledge-A Skipper's Reference.

Joe Russell grew up in the San Francisco Bay area where he attended Cal State Hayward. After being injured in a hydroplane accident, he took to sailing on the Bay, which, in 1968, led to a yacht delivery job to the Virgin Islands where he set up residence. While living in the Caribbean Joe sailed to most of the countries of Central and South America. Joe's articles on Central America have been featured in Cruising World magazine. Joe is author of Exploring the Marquesas Islands. Joe currently lives in Half Moon Bay, California with his wife and first mate, Mary. He is the father of four and a recent grandfather of twins.

Dee Saunders was born and raised in eastern Pennsylvania and attended East Stroudsburg State College. She moved to San Jose, California in the early 1960s and married. She later became a real estate agent and moved to Northern California. Soon after the move, the marriage dissolved.

Marshall Saunders lived on a sailboat with his wife and daughter in Honolulu, where he owned several dental laboratories. In the late 1970s, his marriage dissolved and he moved to Northern California where he changed professions and became a real estate broker. It was in northern California where Dee and Marshall ultimately met, married, and joined families.

Dee and Marshall opened a Real Estate brokerage in the small mountain community of Shingletown and lived there until retiring in their mid-forties to the cruising lifestyle. Marshall had been sailing all his life, but Dee was new to the adventures. Early in the relationship they did a lot of racing on various sailboats including the Hobie 18, Stelleto 27 and Olson 25. After retiring, they spent nine years living aboard their Tayana 52 and later after their accident, their Tatoosh 51 cruising the waters of British Columbia, Alaska, Mexico, Central and South America, the western Caribbean, the Bahamas and the South Pacific putting many miles of open-ocean cruising under their belt.

They currently reside on Whidbey Island and own a Newberry Port 52 sundeck trawler, on which they spend their summers cruising to Northern British Columbia and Alaska.

Len Sherman was the third crew member on the epic Northwest Passage voyage of the Dove III, one of the first west-to-east single-year passages on record. A commercial artist, Len captures in wonderful pen and ink drawings and journal entries, the beauty and solitude of the far north, as well as its courageous, adventurous people. His is the author of Arctic Odyssey.

Mladen Sutej was born in Zagreb, Croatia in 1945. He graduated from the School of Engineering and Shipbuilding in Zabreb with a degree in thermodynamics. Since 1975 has run his own business for the design of thermodynamic plants.

In 1983 Sutej undertook his first major ocean voyage, crossing the Atlantic solo from east to west on his 10-meter yacht, HIR 3. For the non-stop return trip from Miami to Rijeka, Croatia he was joined by two friends. In 1988-90, Sutej organized an expedition to Cape Horn, successfully rounding it before completeing his first circumnavigation of the world. In 1993 he founded the Croatian Offshore Yachting Club and started organizing a project called The Croatian Scientific and Sporting Arctic-Antarctic Expedition for which his boat, Croatian Tern, was built. The successful completion of this voyage around the world in the longitudinal direction is the subject of Sutej's book, The Arctic to the Antarctic. Sutej lives in Zabreb with his architect wife, Tatanya, and his daughter.

Born in Pau, France and raised in Santa Cruz, California, Bill has enjoyed surfing and snorkeling since he was a teenager. Having completed his Air Force commitment after a tour in Vietnam as an Aerial Reconnaissance Photographer, he graduated from San Francisco State University with a Bachelor or Arts degree in anthropology and a teaching credential.

Bill worked as a caretaker at the Calico Early Man Archeological Site under the tutelage of Ruth DeEtte Simpson. He also participated in several projects and field surveys conducted by the Paleontology and Geology Department of the Museum of Northern Arizona with William J. Breed as curator. In the early 1980s, Bill volunteered as a docent, then became a paid staff member, at the Ano Nuevo State Reserve in San Mateo County, California.

Bill's love of nature, archeology and geology, plus his skill as a photographer, brought excitement to the classroom where he taught social studies for more than 10 years. In 1984, he moved to Sacramento and is now hard at work on the Volume 4 of the Sacramento paddling guidebook, Up the Lake with A Paddle. Bill is married and has one son who loves fishing and baseball.

Anne and Laurence Yeadon-Jones are experienced offshore and inshore sailors who voyaged from Southampton, England in 1985 on their first adventure across the Atlantic Ocean. Over the last 17 years they have logged thousands of cruising hours charting, recording and photographing their travels, exclusively along the beautifully rugged coastline and islands of the Pacific Northwest. To date they have produced 4 colorful, information-packed Dreamspeaker Cruising Guides and see themselves as passionate ambassadors of the area’s unspoiled cruising waters, its coastal communities and local enterprises. Through their writing, charting and photography they endeavor to promote safe and enjoyable boating while profiling the uniqueness of coastal life. Anne and Laurence are also regular contributors to local and international boating magazines. They live in Vancouver’s West End and keep their 36-foot sailboat Dreamspeaker and faithful dinghy, Tink, close by.