BUSINESS PROFILE BP
PHOTO: Tiffany Brooks
Water in his DNA San Juan Cruises born from a lifelong love of the sea Tammi Loucks San Juan Cruises founder Capt. Drew Schmidt’s love of the sea is ingrained in his DNA. Born and raised in the seaport city of Seattle, he regularly played on area beaches as a child. As a teen, his love of boats led him to join Sea Scouts, a nautical program of the Boy Scouts of America. There, he learned crucial boating skills such as piloting, navigating, engineering and general boating safety. His passion for boating stayed strong, and as a young adult, he worked for various charter companies and eventually became a captain. You could say that from a young age, his career path in the charter industry was divined. “So many people that I knew were in the charter boat business, and I wasn’t
smart enough to do something different,” Schmidt joked.”But as I got older, I realized I enjoyed the business side of things as much as I enjoyed being a captain.” So, in 1987, he moved to Bellingham to start his first business venture, Gray Line Cruises, a franchise of Gray Line. The company offered passenger ferry service between Semiahmoo Resort in Blaine and Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands, along with wildlife cruises. After the completion of the Alaska Ferry Terminal, the Port of Bellingham approached Schmidt about relocating to the port. “I recognized this was a great opportunity,” he said.”so in the fall of 1991,
we moved the business to Bellingham and changed the name to San Juan Cruises.” The move also prompted the company to expand passenger ferry service, and for many years, San Juan Cruises operated boats servicing Bellingham, the San Juan Islands and Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. For the next two decades, the business thrived. Then came the change in passport laws. Starting over after 20 years On June 1, 2009, the United States enacted the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which established new document requirements for travel into the United States from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda,
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MAY/JUN 2020 | BUSINESSPULSE.COM
