Seabreeze Limited in Point Loma has been helping local mariners find their way since 1980.
For 35 years, the family-owned shop at 1254 Scott St. has sold new and used nautical books, charts, license study guides, supplies and jewelry. Its website, at seabreezelimited.com, claims it is the best-stocked nautical bookstore on the West Coast. Seabreeze offers the complete catalog of NOAA and NGA navigation charts and publications as well as charts from the Canadian Hydrograpic Service and the British Admiralty.
“That wall will take you anywhere across the Pacific, to the Panama Canal and Canada,” said Seabreeze’s current owner Capt. Ann Kinner, a USCG licensed master. “We can order charts from anywhere in the world.”
Kinner said Seabreeze typically stocks the most common nautical charts for the San Diego area. “My business partners and I are the fourth people to have owned this business,” said Kinner, adding she has no competition locally. “The closest business similar to ours is in Seattle,” said Kinner, who owns and lives on a boat.
Kinner’s business partners are a husband-and-wife team.
“Their job is to be out promoting,” she said. “My job is to run the show.”
Turning to her chart room with rolled-up maps in slots taking up an entire wall, Kinner said, “This is the core of the store. Fifty percent of what we do is based on what’s in this room.”
The boat pilot pointed out her clientele comprises anyone with a boat, including military craft, fishing boats, large yachts and a whole fleet of cruisers that comes through every year on their way to and from Mexico from Canada.
The boating demographic has changed in recent years.
“The (economic) crunch hit in 2008,” Kinner explained, “and we lost a huge chunk of our fleet in California, about 25 percent.” She added that the cruising fleet used to be more middle class but is trending toward “older owners with more money, bigger boats and, in some cases, professional crews on board.”
“We are a funny little niche business,” said Kinner, adding her nautical shop has been gradually shifting to gifts and jewelry to complement book and chart sales.
Discussing her used books on Seabreeze’s second story, Kinner said guests are welcome to spend as much time there as they like. She added, “They have to bring their own tea or coffee.”
Kinner half-jokingly commented that Seabreeze’s second story is “haunted.”
“I swear, people come in and go right up there – and they won’t be back down for an hour or more with whatever treasures they’ve found,” she said.
Kinner said a customer even managed to fall asleep upstairs once.
“It was winter,” she said. “A guy fell asleep in a chair, and the lights halfway up the stairs got turned off, so he wasn’t noticed. He woke up, and everything was locked, even the inside, which locks with a key. Fortunately, a phone number was posted for the owner, and the guy called and said, ‘I’m trapped in your store. Help me out.’”
Perhaps surprisingly, Kinner’s inventory reveals that “The most popular item in the store is some sort of used book upstairs that’s priced at exactly seven bucks.”
“We never know for sure what we’ve got up there,” she added. “We just know that (books) turn over quickly.”
Kinner also noted that she carries nautical-themed gifts that people would like to have on their boat or in their house.
“We try to have things that fill in the gaps,” she said, adding, “We can do special orders, too.”