John Perkins
Tel: 401-683-7000Cell: 401-965-7067
jperkins@lhyb.com
One Little Harbor Landing
Portsmouth, RI 02871
John’s Bio
John’s love for the water and boats started early in childhood. As a boy he loved making model sailboats and organizing races with friends. His water roots were on Buzzards Bay, in southeastern Massachusetts, and Maine while visiting grandparents on the North Haven Island. Racing sailing dinghies soon became a passion. John built his own boat when he was twelve. In high school John started a school sailing team and proceeded to win the New England secondary school championships. Summers during college John had jobs teaching and running sailing schools for yacht clubs in Maine and Seattle, Washington.
John is quick to admit that his penchant for boats contributed to a bumpy first college experience. However, after a land locked stint in the Mid-West, John discovered an interest in history and government, graduating from Monmouth College in Illinois in the late sixties, and then graduate school at the University of Wisconsin. When John returned East, it was quite by accident that he became a part-time yacht broker for Northrop & Johnson in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Still thinking of yacht brokerage as a short-term vocation, he joined the Alden Yacht brokerage office in Boston. “Short term”, became eighteen years with Alden and in 1989 he joined The Hoods of Little Harbor to head up our yacht brokerage office.
John is most definitely a family man. He and his wife, Nancy Driggs, whom he met when she was a “would be” client looking for a houseboat, have been married since the middle 1970s. John and Nancy have three children: Doctor Jessica, a practicing pediatrician and son in law Kelly, Fletcher, in the investment business and daughter in law Jenny, and Trevor, a lawyer.
John and his wife live in a house that they created (or recreated) that is not only on the water but, in fact, “over the water” in Tiverton, Rhode Island. To date, this is the closest Nancy and John have come to Nancy’s, as yet, illusive houseboat.
Armed with a telephone, his corral of loyal clients, and a well-earned reputation, our “professor” dials for dollars, driven by a passion to please his clients, and making our office a humming place. With an almost uncanny ability to draw qualified buyers out of the woodwork, John repeatedly is able to find them that just-right boat. Multiple sea trials and surveys typically overlap, whether they are in Florida, New England or abroad, John walks through all this with a seeming effortlessness using his magic “autopilot”. With back-to-back successful, and growth years a virtual rule, our John always seems to have fun doing what he does so well, while still making time for family and a life outside of the boat business.
