Ian Lallow on Boatbuilding

I always remember the first boat I worked on was a Dragon Class called ‘Tamino’ and then father started building … he was already building racing yachts but then we got into the designs of Sparkman and Stevens and we built a boat called ‘Roundabout’ for Sir Max Aitken, 1965, which I helped to build, and then raced on it with Sir Max for many years.

And we built boats like ‘Firebrand’ for a fellow called Dennis Miller and then of course we built two ‘Morning Clouds’ for Sir Edward Heath, ‘71’ ’73, and I raced with him.

They were short of a crew when it went to Australia in 1971. He had to go to a Prime Minster’s Conference in Singapore, so they were short of one so they decided that I was the ideal man to go so, you know, that’s fine, so I had the job of getting it unloaded in Sydney and getting the mast in and getting the boat ready and then I joined the crew and it went on from there and I raced with him for five, six, seven years, something like that in the ‘70’s.