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Testimonial for Yacht Broker Jeff Phillips | Denison Yachting

I’ve been a boater in Chicago for 46 years. A few months ago, my wife and I decided we were done and that it was time to sell our boat. I went to the web and punched in some info about our DeFever trawler on the Denison Yacht Sales web site. Within 2 hours or so I received an email from Jeff Phillips. He began by letting me know that he understood exactly what I was going through, because he, personally, had a similar size and age of a boat, was a Chicago boater. Then he told me where he stored his boat over the winters and said that he had seen and admired a boat like ours in the winter storage boatyard. Turned out it was our boat. Talk about Serendipity! By the time the boat got launched for the season, because of the pandemic, it was already well into August and we thought the selling season was almost over. But, Jeff told us that very often, his best months are October and November. In our discussions I also let him know that in the summer of 2019 I had a quintuple bypass open-heart surgery and that my wife did not want me having the stress of taking the boat to or from the boatyard. Those were always the days we would call “Anything Can Happen Day” and in our experience, it almost always did. Jeff said “Don’t worry about it”, and then dealt with the boat getting launched, took our boat from the boatyard into the harbor, tied it up safely, and let us know all was good. By the way, that was a full day of work, over 12 hours.

Over the next couple of months, Jeff treated our boat like it was his own, including checking on it in bad weather, keeping it clean, doing video tours with people from all over the world (he even had yacht prospects from Australia and also New Zealand), and doing everything needed to make it appealing to prospective buyers. In Chicago, ALL boats must be removed from the harbors by October 31. But, since Jeff wanted to keep trying to sell it, he moved it to another harbor around 5 hours north of Chicago where he had a personal slip, and just tied up our boat in his slip without even asking for us to pay him anything for all of that effort, or for all of his work in bringing it there, and getting himself back home.

Finally, in DECEMBER, when all boats have already been taken out of the water and stored for the winter, Jeff found a ready, willing, and able buyer for our boat. The deal closed over the Christmas weekend and we quickly received our proceeds. We wanted to be sure that YOU were aware of how far above and beyond Jeff went to make sure that anything and everything that could be done to get our yacht sold, was done, and was done in the most professional way anyone should ever be able to expect. Just wanted to be sure YOU knew how professionally Jeff handled this entire process. We would be happy to recommend our yacht broker, Jeff Phillips, to anyone even thinking about selling their boat.

Stephen & Barbara Stillman on Jeff Phillips