BOATS
B
uilding a wooden boat from
scratch is a huge investment
in time and money – hence
the popularity of home build
kits on the market.
But husband and wife team Tom and
Lorraine Owen went one step further, both
designing and building the 30ft motorboat
Thea from scratch. They even built a shed
at Premier’s Noss marina facility in
Dartmouth in which to construct the boat.
Entirely self taught, Tom’s history of
boatbuilding goes right back to his
childhood. At the age of 12 he built
himself a punt out of hardboard and at 16
he converted a small clinker-built boat,
adding a cabin and wheelhouse and fitting
an engine out of an Austin 7.‘I used to go fishing at Cardiff Docks in the
1960s,’ says Tom. ‘There were a huge
number of derelict boats just lying in the
mud and I felt that it must be possible to
do something with them. It was all done
on a shoestring – I was still at school when
I had my first boat.
‘It’s just been a sequence of boats
thereafter. I went from a 17-footer to a
28-footer to a 34-footer.’
Most of these were derelicts, the first
proper yacht Tom owned being a Golden
Hind 31 that he bought in 1975.
It had been written off after sinking on its
moorings, and after rebuilding it, putting a
new bottom into it and getting it up to
scratch, Tom sailed it to the Mediterranean- quite an adventure.
Tom has owned many vessels since, most
early ones bought as abandoned boats or
insurance write-offs and renovated. He
also finished off an Elizabethan 33 which
he bought as a bare hull and deck and
then fitted out.
At the time he was, by his own
admission, ‘slumming it’, living aboard the
boats that he’d rebuilt. He describes
himself as a waterborne hippie.
It was a lifestyle that changed when he
met Lorraine in 1981.
‘The hair was the first thing that had to
go,’ laughs Lorraine. The couple got
married two years later and bought a
cottage in Galmpton, close to the River
Dart, Tom having relocated to South
Devon on his way to the Med with theA family affair
Tom and Lorraine Owen built their 30ft motor-cruiser
completely from scratch, working together with
phenomenal dedication. Nick Burnham reports