HONNOR MARINE


DEVON ORIGINALS


Bob and Norma Brown are familiar figures at Beale Park with their Devon Luggers. Peter Willis went to visit them


I


’ve come to Rochdale, the Lancashire mill town and home of the Devon Lugger. Which to the untutored eye looks indistinguishable from the Drascombe Lugger. How’s that then?


The answer is the classic tale of the man who liked the product so much he bought the company. In this case, the man is Bob Brown, and in 1997 he decided to buy a second-hand Drascombe Coaster. Wanting to check the boat’s age, he jotted down the hull number to phone the builder, Honnor Marine of Totnes, Devon. When he did so, he was shocked to find that he was speaking to an administrator and that Honnor Marine had gone into liquidation. All its assets, including boat moulds and plugs, fittings and spares, were for sale by tender. Bob liked and admired the Drascombe designs and felt he’d like to continue building them. He and Norma had just sold their business, so were cash-rich, and also had an empty factory. They decided to put in a tender – it was in fact the only tender submitted, and within weeks he and Norma had bought the business. The one thing they didn’t obtain was the licence to use the Drascombe trademark, which then, as now, belonged to the family of the designer of the original Lugger, John Watkinson. Honnor Marine had held it since being set up to build the first Drascombe Luggers in GRP back in 1968, but the licence had more recently been transferred to McNulty Boats (and later to the present holders, Churchouse Boats).


So with the original moulds, Bob and Norma began producing boats,


Above: Norma and Bob Brown – liked the boat, bought the company


44


rechristened as the ‘Original Devon Lugger’. “It was slow going to begin with,” says Bob. “We only sold one Scaffie in the first 18 months – though we built one of every model to get the hang of it. We brought the existing staff up from Devon to begin with to train up our workforce.” At that stage, the Drascombe Lugger had a 30-year


history. Retired naval officer John Watkinson had designed it in 1965 as a safe and stable daysailer – with


CLASSIC BOAT JUNE 2012


“Things began to take off in 2000 when they first came to Beale”


more than a hint of the Cobles of the northeast coast about it – to encourage his seasick-prone wife to enjoy sailing. He built the first one, in ply, in a barn at Drascombe Barton in Devon. On its first outing at the London Boat Show in 1968, the stand boat was sold inside 20 minutes, and 11 orders were taken. In the years that followed, the 18ft 9in (5.7m) Lugger was joined by the smaller Dabber (15ft 6in/4.7m) and Scaffie (14ft 9in/4.5m), and the larger Longboat (21ft 9in/6.6m) also available with a small cabin as the Cruiser, as well as a number of other variations. Over 5,000 of the various types have been built worldwide, and the distinctive design has become an icon of traditional trailer-sailing.


For Bob and Norma, things began to take off in 2000 when they first exhibited at Beale Park and also Southampton. They’re familiar faces at both shows, and quite probably one of the hardest- working husband-and-wife teams in the business, regularly spending their weekends delivering new boats or collecting older ones to be refurbished for their owners. In 2003, they took over manufacture of the Dudley Dix-designed Cape Cutter 19, after a conversation at Beale Park with Nick and Lyndsay Voorhoeve who were


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100