Melanie Sunshine Neale grew up living aboard her family’s 47-foot GulfStar sailboat, cruising up and down the East Coast and through the Bahamas for nearly twenty years, and earned her US Coast Guard 100 Ton Master Captain’s License before she got her driver’s license. Melanie has bought and sold six boats of her own and has facilitated the sale of hundreds of boats during her tenure as a yacht broker with Edwards Yacht Sales and currently as founder and owner of Sunshine Cruising Yachts, a medium-sized yacht brokerage located in Florida but with brokers worldwide. She received the 2022 Sailing Industry Distinguished Service Award.

Melanie is the author of the memoirs Boat Girl and Boat Kid (Beating Windward Press), and former contributor to Cruising World and other nautical magazines. She has worked as everything from minnow scooper at a bait & tackle shop to adjunct professor at a university. She’s a single mom to a teen and lives in St. Augustine, Florida, with a six-toed cat and a Boykin spaniel. Melanie is dedicated to matching people with the right boats.