First thing I would do would be to hit every boat show I could and pick the brains of all the people working the dealier/manufacturer booths. I would suspect that while most of them are sales guys, a few of them might be marketers.
I would think that there are a couple of challenges in boat marketing that are perennial challenges, ones the people are always looking for new approaches to and solutions for. I would focus on finding out what those are and noodling some creative approaches to them. That would give you your "platform" and talking points when you actually throw yourself into the job market.
I would also go to thehulltruth.com and see if you can find people who are on the marketing side there (and you can bet they read that board).
Lastly, I would start reading this site:
http://www.boating-industry.com/
[ February 03, 2003, 03:00 PM: Message edited by: Alex ]