Anemometer, 90-degree ratchet screwdriver and Katy the dog’s leash are a fraction of the items listed in an 18-page spreadsheet onboard Milt Baker’s boat.
Organized, categorized and under control. That’s how retired U.S. Navy Commander Baker faces his world.
Type A personalities, both he and his wife, Judy, could not stay retired in 1983. By June of 1984 they were back to work. In 1986, their retirement project, Bluewater Books and Charts, was on its way to becoming one of America’s largest nautical stores.
“We missed the challenge of working,” Baker said of their brief retirement. So, calculating his moves as he does when under way, Baker plotted.
The business plan was to have every nautical book and every chart to go anywhere in the world, he said. So that’s what happened, and that’s why megayachts, commercial vessels and cruisers call Bluewater in Ft. Lauderdale before they head to sea. For 15 years the Bakers steered the store near Port Everglades as yachts extended, traveling expanded and electronic navigation took hold.

Partners for half a century
To begin, a tale of Baker necessarily includes his wife and first mate, Judy. For 50 years they’ve been a team.
“I taught him to sail,” Judy said.
They met in high school in Norfolk, Va., when she was 15 and he was 17. Her eyes practically disappear as her smile grows broad when she talks about Milt.
“I was sailing my plywood Sailfish and Milt said, ‘I see what you’re doing. I want to do one part [work sails], then the other [steer]. Then I’ll do both,’” she said. “And he’s been captain ever since.”
Engaged in 1962, the couple married after she graduated college, as Judy’s father decreed. Determined, she graduated from Williams and Mary in two and a half years.
In his 20s, Baker was in the Navy Reserves with a deferment to finish college. Then his ship was deployed and he was pulled to sea on a destroyer as a seaman on a recovery mission. He served nine months and nine days on active duty before going to Officer Candidate School.
“I wanted to be an officer,” Baker said, his face lighting with a knowing grin; it was always in the plan, his eyes seem to say.
So he was and became director of public affairs at U.S. Central Command while Judy became an elementary school teacher. The navy stationed them in St. Petersburg, Fla., and in 1983 they retired to go cruising in the Caribbean.

A habit of seeking adventure
Any story from the mouths of one the Bakers is likely to start with ‘I can’t remember which of us said…’. The day they decided to give up cruising begins in just such a way.
“In the paradise of Grenada or Martinique, one or both of us said, ‘Let’s get summer jobs’,” Baker said.
“One of us said, ‘these places are starting to look alike’,” Judy said. “We were in our mid-40s and too young to retire. So we headed to Annapolis.”
She worked at Fawcett Boat Supplies where she became knowledgeable in marine retail. He worked in a yard and quickly moved into an office position.
Eventually leaving there in search of their next adventure, they headed down the Intracoastal Waterway and stopped in Ft. Lauderdale. They pondered their next step: a circumnavigation, more working for other people, or perhaps buy their own business.
They researched companies to buy, such as bottom maintenance, diesel shops and other marine options but found none a good fit. Then they heard Armchair Sailor was franchising its bookstores.
“We were always the ones in the marina that had more charts and cruising guides than anyone,” Milt said. “I’d been collecting them for 25 years.”
So they created their own database and store design to start their own shop. With fewer resources like the Internet in the early 1980s, they had to research their own inventory. They scoured libraries to learn of nautical books and bought every one they could find. The primary option for boaters at that time was mail order through Dolphin Book Club, a book-of-the-month club.
“We even bought ‘The Way of the Shark,’ which turned out to be about golf,” Judy laughed.
Their initial inventory was thin, with every book’s cover facing the customer to fill shelf space. They had spent $100,000, borrowing money and using their life savings. Bluewater stocked DMA (now NGA) and NOAA charts and chart kits.
“We aimed at cruising sailors like us. But we were opened a few months and realized we had big yachts that needed everything for their trips north.”
That summer the Bakers watched as large yacht captains thought nothing of buying dozens of charts for a trip, while cruisers labored over choosing one.
With deliberate choice of words, borne of years in media and military, Baker reminisced of this unexpected course of the store.
“I’d like to say we were prescient, but we learned instead.”
 
Growth came quickly
In just a few months, Milt and Judy needed help at Bluewater.
After sailing from South Africa and answering a classified ad for a ‘chart hand’ Roger Irvine became Bluewater’s first employee. He worked with the Bakers throughout their time at the store.
“Milt’s a very organized, belt-and-suspenders kind of guy,” Irvine said. “He always had a plan. Where do I want to be today, tomorrow or next year? Milt got me to think that way, even now.”
Both Milt and Judy served as role models for Irvine, he said, because of their strong work ethic, integrity and respect for others.
“They decided not to have children when Milt was in the Navy, so they put everything into Bluewater,” he said. “And he still walks like a sailor.
“He rarely makes mistakes, so he would not like me to tell that on the return trip from Cuba getting Cuban charts from their Hydrographic office, he got stuck on a sandbank. He never cussed. Milt just said, ‘I’ve run aground on my own boat in my own marina. Every man deserves this. Humility,’” Irvine said.

Double up: electronic, paper charts
The retirement project kept growing. Baker wanted to sell navigation electronics, which were only sold through electronics stores at that time.
“In 1988 we got our first electronic charts because LaserPlot came to Bluewater and saw the big-boat traffic.”
LaserPlot gave Bluewater a demo machine and let the store sell CDs on consignment. It was the first system that most yachts had, Baker said.
“C-Map was coming on with monochrome vector charts so we told them we wanted to sell them. They only sold through electronics dealers,” said Baker but soon Bluewater became one of the largest sellers of C-Map also.
And Bluewater sold more NOAA and DMA charts than any other non-government business. It also sold products to many commercial vessels and cruise ships.
The Bakers’ idea from the start was to carry every possible chart, so
they began to chase British Admiralty. By that time, yachts were traveling in Croatia and other less common locations around the world.
“We had a charter captain in the Med who wanted to go to Venice,” Baker said. “He didn’t have charts, but charter captains don’t say they can’t do something. They find a way. He called us.
“We cut the chart into fax-size pieces, labeled them on a grid pattern and sent them on the Sat phone,” Baker said of this time before e-mail was common. “That must have been $15 a minute for over two hours.”
The captain received the sections, pieced them back together according to the grid and had happy charter guests, Baker said.
“No one trusted electronic charts at that time. But they were starting to buy them and they still bought paper. This doubled our business.”

Bluewater sold in 2000
By the late 1990s and the emergence of the Internet, Bluewater had reached a crossroad; facing the potential demise of paper charts, the store would need to vastly expand its electronic navigation section and amp up its Web presence. That’s when the Bakers decided to sell.
Selling in 2000 to the current owners Vivien Godfrey and John Mann allowed the store to grow in new directions.
“We had done what we wanted to do,” Baker said.
 Now officially of retirement age, the Bakers spend much of their time aboard their boat, not retired at all. Together with their dog, a Schipperke named Katy, the Bakers participate in and have even organized the Nordhavn Atlantic Rally.
Milt has also been the senior contributing editor to Circumnavigator magazine for eight years. And they also cruise the northeastern United States in summer.
Still, Baker is most comfortable near the rows of electronic equipment on the bridge where he has installed twin autopilots, Nobletec, Furuno, NavNet, Automatic Identification System (AIS) and backups for his backups. He has embraced boats and technology since before his days in the U.S. Navy.
As if on watch, with alert eyes and straight back, even when tied to the dock, Baker points out familiar yachts nearby displayed on the AIS screen.
“She’s a 47-foot with the feel of a ship,” he beams about their Nordhavn, his eyes narrowing in that knowing way. “And I know the feel of a ship.”

Dorie Cox is a staff reporter with The Triton. Comments on this story are welcome at dorie@the-triton.com.