Running Free by Robin Knox-Johnston

Author:Robin Knox-Johnston [Knox-Johnston, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

10

FROM THE DOCKS TO THE WHITBREAD

We took over Port Hamble in 1974 and shortly afterwards became Rank Marine International, part of the Rank Organisation. We closed the yard at Mercury, renting out the buildings, and combined everything at Port Hamble. This gave me a boatyard with 200 employees and two marinas to run. It was fun for a time and challenging. A slump was beginning, not helped by the government putting a 25 per cent VAT rate on anything to do with yachting – yet not on any other sport – so people were saving where they could. Work on boats became less available and it was necessary to lay off some men as we were told the yard must make a profit or be closed.

The yard manager had not even stopped the overtime, even though there was no work. Taking advantage of his absence I called the workforce together and told them the facts of life, stopped the overtime and read out a list of 20 people who would be made redundant. I then phoned round the other local yards and found jobs for them all. When they left at the end of the week, tool boxes in hand – a shipwright’s pride and joy – they had to walk past the yard manager and the accountant carrying a case of champagne down to one of the demonstration boats in order to entertain the chairman that evening. I was ashamed and resigned as a director. I was out of work for less than two months, though, because Peter Drew invited me to join him in the small team at St Katharine’s Docks, next to Tower Bridge in London, to create a marina in the first of the old commercial docks to be redeveloped for leisure purposes.

St Katharine’s Yacht Haven can never work as a normal marina from an economic perspective as it cannot offer enough berths to cover the costs of running the lock into the Thames. Its value lay in the increased rents that could be achieved from offices on the site. In those days this was about £2 per square foot. Had this been credited to the marina the dock could have operated on a break-even basis. It would not be easy to market. On the one hand it had an attractive location, close to the City and centre of London, but from a yachting perspective it was a good tide away from decent sailing waters, usually a necessity for a successful marina development. The Haven was popular enough in the summer months when yachtsmen from Belgium, Holland and Germany visited to enjoy the excitement of London, but few visitors came in winter so income fell during that period. The challenge was how to produce steady income throughout the year.

The new marina facility needed to raise its profile and as a way of gaining publicity we started a series of races every Wednesday evening around the basins using Laser dinghies. I enticed teams: the yachting journalists, Olympic

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