CLASSIC BOAT APRIL 2016 49The man behind one of the UK’s biggest classic
regattas now wants to create a wooden boat hub
STORY ROB PEAKE PHOTOGRAPH EMILY HARRISB
oth hands on the table, firm but open stance,
easy smile and big laugh, confident yet
self-deprecating, Jonathan Dyke is an engaging
interviewee. He positively exudes good health
and talks with a vigour, and candour, that is quite
refreshing. If he was a politician, he’d be persuasive to
the point of dangerous. Luckily, he’s putting his energies
into far more important matters. And over a day in his
company, his office door wide open while we talk, he’s in
expansive mood. Ask him about Suffolk Yacht Harbour,
where he has been MD since 2001, and he talks with
conviction and not a little bit of affection. Ask him about
Cereste, his 1938 Robert Clark Mystery, and the
historian emerges, full of detail about structure and
design. Then there’s the classic regatta he started and
which is now one of the UK’s biggest. “I’m lucky because
I do something I’m passionate about,” he shrugs. “I can’t
help being enthusiastic. I love talking boats!”
There is a line on the Suffolk Yacht Harbour website,
written in 2005 after a series of upgrades to the River
Orwell site, declaring that “the marina is finished”. Not
quite true. Since then they’ve put in a new clubhouse,
new boat repair sheds, a new crane, new workshops, a
new dry-stack area, new office buildings (opened by
Griff Rhys Jones in 2013), new showers and last month
they bought traditional chandlers Classic Marine. It’s
been a remarkable few years for the business, especially
given the economic climate, and Dyke adds: “The outline
planning permission for the marina was for 600 berths.
We’re at 550, so we’re not there yet.”
Suffolk Yacht Harbour grew out of a stretch of bare
mudbank halfway up the tidal River Orwell, on
England’s East Coast. It was chartered surveyor Michael
Spear, carrying out a probate valuation of the site for
landowner Charles Stennett in 1961, who first saw its
potential, recalling: “I had been sailing on the Orwell for
many years, but when you have to trudge across a
muddy beach to reach your dinghy, and then row some
way out into the channel before you even reach yourboat, you start to envy people who can simply walk
aboard. You start to dream a little.”
It took until 1967 to get the planning permission and
then three years of labour to build the first 40 berths,
which were booked immediately. By 1973, half a million
tonnes of mud had been removed and 170 berths put in.
Dyke joined in 1982 as assistant harbour master,
having done a Yacht & Boatyard Management course at
Southampton Institute and worked at Colvic Craft and
then Berthon. Five years later he was harbourmaster and
had joined the board, alongside such figures as designer
Kim Holman and boat builder Eric Wright, who’d been
instrumental in the marina’s early stages.
Now 59, Dyke recalls: “I joined in my early thirties
and had this wonderful opportunity. I was sitting there
with some brilliant people. We were still digging holes in
the mud back then. It was a fantastic training.”
Today there are 14 separate businesses on site,
ranging from a sail training school to a surveyor to an
outboard repair shop. While some marinas suffered in
the recession, SYH had 100% occupancy and Dyke says:
“We’ve tried to find independent businesses with good
track records to come and work with us – that’s one
factor that has kept the whole place so busy. We’re a
one-stop shop, but you’re not dealing with one company
that tries to be all things to all people. You can go and
talk to a real rigger, a real sail loft, all on site. We have
grown in a different way to other marinas.”
The transformation of the original mudbanks to a
multi-armed marine business site is perhaps as laudable
for what it has left untouched. A visit to Suffolk Yacht
Harbour is a bucolic experience. If some marinas are
boat carparks, then Suffolk Yacht Harbour – or
“Levington” as many refer to it, after the nearby village- is an escape. Comparisons with the UK South Coast
are never far away and as a marina manager Dyke
acknowledges the “glass ceiling” on what East Coast
marinas can charge (a berth might be £7,000 less
annually than on the South Coast). But perhaps there’s a
CONDUIT FOR
THE CLASSIC
JONATHAN DYKE