But, the 65-year-old just wants to spend more time on his own boat, when he knocks off work at Read Marine for the final time at 5pm today.
"I'm looking forward to retirement. I'll be able to get out fishing on my boat a bit more often," he said yesterday.
Mr Paterson was 17 and just out of school when he joined the company's parts department in 1963 - the same year present owner Latham Wardhaugh was born.
He later bought the company, but sold it three years ago.
"When I sold it, I just stayed on as a salesman and went back to where I started.
"I had nothing else to do, really.
"Basically, I just enjoy the place.
"If I wasn't a boat fanatic I probably wouldn't have stayed all these years," he said.
The golden age of boating in New Zealand was the 1970s, he said, when the company was selling Glasscraft, Crestacraft and Plylite boats as quickly as new stock arrived.
"We couldn't keep up with demand in the mid '70s.
"We used to sell loads of inboard gear. It's virtually all outboards and jets now," he said.
"Boating's changed hugely over the years.
"The technology is very different today to when I started, when you had a lot of inboards with a straight shaft through the hull.
"They were powered by Ford 10s, Zephyrs, Consuls ... they were mostly car engines that had been `marinised', as we used to say.
"You saw some hard case things back then. The new stuff is much more reliable.
"There's far more aluminium boats around now, too, probably because of the popularity of the Stabi-Craft.
"They're virtually unsinkable. You can fill them full of water and they'll still float."
