About

Starting as The Houseboat Centre it went on to include all Yacht Brokerage as Associated Yacht Brokers.

Innovation is driven by Hon Chairman David Greenaway, a Microsoft Certified Professional, who when Berners-Lee wrote a proposal in March 1989 for “a large hypertext database with typed links”.Although the proposal attracted little interest at the time David was already programming in hypertext databases using Open Access II from Software products International.

His innovation was also manifest in the now famous “Houseboat Interviews” where hundreds from all over the world would visit to spend two or three hours being methodically questioned having answers and new ideas given for them personally as regard what they should or could look for in a houseboat and what to look out for.

Now condensed and available as The Houseboat Book (which you can find in PROJECTS in the Menu above )

Cloud based office IT for Yacht brokers was implemented and reccomended by AYB in 2006 using WebOffice, then owned by Cisco. (Microsoft didn’t start with cloud services until 2010) AYB subsequently investigated and now advocate full use of Google services to provide an integrated cloud based system. The Reason for going cloud? Machine independence. you can lose all your computers etc in a fire overnight and carry on running your business in the morning using new, borrowed or hired pc’s

AYB was instrumental in researching and initiating Yacht Broker Certification in the UK in line with CPYB in the USA and was swiftly copied by a joint effort of the two largest UK Yacht Broker organisations.