Christopher Cooke

Christopher Cooke has spent his life around the water. He learned to sail as a boy at the Crescent Yacht Club on Lake Ontario, right down the street from the summer cottage he grew up in, and has made his living in the marine industry since 1995. He has held a bonded Florida yacht and ship broker’s license since March 2000.

Christopher carries the Certified Professional Yacht Broker (CPYB) designation, held by a few hundred brokers in North America, and is a member of the International Yacht Brokers Association. He also holds a 100-ton USCG Master’s license with towing endorsement, earned at the Chapman School of Seamanship. He has run the vessels he sells, and it shows in how he reads a survey, a sea trial, and a maintenance history.

Before any of that he served as an infantry platoon medic with the 1st of the 87th, 10th Mountain Division, with combat tours in Somalia, Africa, and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He was honorably discharged in 1995 with more than fourteen decorations, among them the Combat Medical Badge and awards for valor and for humanitarian service. Years later he co-authored a book about his time in the military, Behind the Gun. The work changed; the job did not. Christopher has spent his adult life looking after people at moments that matter to them — first under fire, now across a closing table. Spencer Christopher Yacht and Ship is a veteran-owned business.

His brokerage career started in Buffalo, New York, while he was attending D’Youville University, with a part-time job at Obersheimers Sailing Supply and then Seven Seas Yacht Brokerage. From there he moved to MarineMax in North Palm Beach and Boone & Howell Marine Group in North Carolina. As General Sales Manager for Erwin Marine Sales in Nashville he ran seventeen staff and more than $25 million in annual sales, and became the youngest general manager to earn an Ambassador dealership — an outcome he credits to attention to detail and the standard he holds on every file. While at Erwin he continued his education, earning a business degree from Trevecca Nazarene University.

In 2009 Christopher founded the Spencer Christopher Division in Stuart, Florida, and helped build it into the largest division of United Yacht Sales, roughly 36 brokers at its prime. Always looking for a better way to do the work, he formed Spencer Christopher Yacht and Ship as the independent house that grew out of that division.

How Christopher works with clients

Christopher handles his own clients from the first conversation to the closing table: the valuation, marketing and photography, negotiation, sea trial, survey coordination, escrow, and closing documents. His name is on all of it, and he answers for all of it. Nothing goes out under the company name that he has not read himself or is not aware of.

That standard sets who he hires. Christopher keeps the house to elite brokers, because at the end of the day he answers for their work the same as his own. He believes that a house built of amazing people who share the same goals and the same values, and who put their clients first, takes care of the rest on its own. Teamwork makes the dream work.

Sellers get an honest number rather than a flattering one, with a written case for how it was reached. Buyers get the vessel as it stands, including what a survey is likely to find and what it will cost to put right. No one is moved toward a deal that does not serve them. A brokerage holds money, vessels, and confidence that belong to other people, and that obligation comes before the commission.

Spencer Christopher Yacht and Ship is built on quality rather than quantity. Christopher is content to let other firms claim the title of largest brokerage in the world. What he measures is the quality of the inventory and how well every client behind it is represented.

Two companies and a chandlery

Christopher owns two companies. Spencer Christopher Yacht and Ship is the brokerage.

Christopher also owns a yacht management company, Spencer Christopher Yacht Management. His wife, Linzey, runs the management side as CFO with a group of department directors over captains and crew, mechanical, electrical, and shipwright work, specialty detailing, and the wash teams. An owner who buys through the brokerage can hand the vessel to the same people the day after closing.

The Stuart office also houses Six Bells Chandler House, the retail arm — curated nautical goods, local art, antiques, and branded merchandise, with the brokerage behind a glass partition at the back. Six Bells is ship’s time, three hours into a four-hour watch. It is also a private dedication: Linzey and the five “Cooke” children, the whole crew.

Christopher is based in Stuart, Florida, with brokers up and down the Eastern Seaboard, in the Bahamas, and in Central America. He is a supporter of the Coastal Conservation Association, a past board member of the Maritime and Classic Boat Museum of Florida, and coached youth lacrosse for seven years.

Anyone who spends five minutes with Christopher hears the passion he has for the work. He will say he has never worked a day in his life, because he does what he loves and his job is his hobby. He enjoys nothing more than helping people and helping his brokers get better. He likes to train, he likes to support, and his standing question — to clients and to his own house alike — is what he can do to help.

He works as hard as anyone in the business and takes little of the credit. Asked what accounts for the success, he gives one answer: he is never the smartest person in the room. He sees the job as conducting the orchestra. He knows who to call, who has the right answer, and who ought to be the smartest person in the room on a given question — and it is never him.

He owns Spencer Christopher Yacht and Ship, and he will not call it his. Asked how it came about, he describes wanting a brokerage house that clients and brokers alike would be proud of, built to serve them. He compares it to a luxury Airbnb: the owner builds it and keeps it right, but it exists for the people who stay in it. It was never about him.

By his account, an epic yacht brokerage house comes down to four things:

• Well-seasoned, proven leadership
• Epic clients
• Epic brokers
• Epic staff