Henry Wrigley on Boatbuilding

What I have seen in my years here is rather sad but it’s just a fact life, there used to be a lot of yacht building all round Cowes. Wonderful, lovely skills, great people involved.

Nowadays, rather like the car industry, yachts are built well inland in Europe, in this country almost on a conveyor belt and then they are fitted out so in other words the original yacht building of those wonderful skills does exist but not used as much as they used to. That’s rather a sad thing.

However, especially as youngsters who go into it, they go and learn all this high tech equipment and all the rest of it, and then of course to the horror of the ship and yacht building industry, they’re eyes see the glitter of better employment with such technology that they move into other industries, but this is a fact of life.

I always remember listening to an after-dinner talk where a visiting Team Captain of a yacht said, “Cowes is unique,” he said, “Where can you be in a collision on the starting line one day and the next day that yacht having been ashore, is back on the line the next day?”

There’s even one famous yacht built here, built by Lallows Yard, I won’t say the name or who the owner is but you can guess, this was taking part in Cowes Week, very famous owner indeed, and they had to leave a Security Guard on board all night when it was moored, and to their horror, first thing in the morning, they found some vandals had scratched into this beautiful varnished hull, some political slogans. You know, that yacht was on the slip within 15-20 minutes in a Boat Yard in Cowes, it was back on the line at 10 o’clock that morning, perfect. Not even the owner knew until he was told afterwards.

That gives you some idea of the capabilities in the Port.