Q7. If you had just one piece of advice for a marine surveyor, what would it be and why?


It is essential for the surveyor to be constantly aware of technical progress as well as of the technical standards which would have been standard practice at the many dates at which any of the many craft he/she sets out to survey would have been built. He/she will need to constantly keep in touch with progress and be constantly aware of the materials supply market and the phraseology in current use.


Q8. What over the course of your life might you have changed if you had the opportunity to have another go?


Well nothing fundamentally, but I think I did my very first survey when I was sixteen and still at school, although even at that time I had a lot of woodwork and associated experience to call on. I think if I remember correctly, I was paid


with a packet of fags! Everything was far less regulated in those days although you still had to get it right. I wrote the report by hand in my terrible hand writing and got a well-meaning friend to type it up for me and that should have made it clear that I needed to go on a typing course. Reports need to be completed whilst everything is still fresh in your mind. Progress came in the form of hand held tape recorders; then word processors, followed by digital cameras - not to mention thickness gauges, moisture metres and many other aids. Also came liability insurance, so the surveyor needs to constantly look forward into the future.


Q9. What hobbies do you have and how might we find you relaxing?


Talking about myself personally, what do I do in my spare time? Well I don’t get out and about as much as I used to, due to advancing years. In particular I don’t get out on the water as much as I would like. It is


some time since I last had a boat of my own, and although I have a lot of friends who have boats, but also don’t get to use them enough, that is not quite the same thing!


I try to avoid gardening and DIY, although I do still have a small workshop and racks of tools. Then again, I have always read a lot, and I always have two or three books on the go. Usually at least one non-fiction, mostly history or technical and fiction authors of one sort or another. Favourite authors? Sandford, Connelly, Kellerman and James Lee Burke. Of older more classical authors? Du Maurier. There are too many to mention. I don’t write so much myself any more. Poetry and fiction hardly at all, but of course there is still plenty of technical stuff to do. I still work for local companies on design and development work and that is something I love, but I suppose it is true to say that my happiest hours when not sailing have always been in my workshop, making something.


...it is true to say that my happiest hours when not sailing have always been in my workshop, making something.


82 | The Report • June 2019 • Issue 88


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