During a breakout room in an online meeting, when I spoke about the work I do helping veterans, he casually said, “we should have a chat sometime, my father was in the Navy.” It sounded like the kind of comment that might lead to a quick conversation about ships or family history, instead we talked for over 4 hours.
Sometimes you meet someone online during a business network and expect the usual polite exchange in a follow up call: a bit of project talk, maybe a face to face meeting if things go well. Sometimes, you meet someone and a half an hour one-to-one conversation turns into much more.
That was how it orignially started; talking about the round the world yacht races he had done, engineering ideas he had incorporated into his design, fabrics my airship project could look at instead of existing materials. The sort of conversations where one topic quietly rolls into another and suddenly the clock has lost all meaning. I’ve also lost count of the times we spent using AOS maps thereafter. Not glancing at them, I mean studying them, the way some people read novels. It did not take long to realise I was speaking with someone quite unusual.
He was one of the most intelligent, knowledgeable and hands on people I have ever met in my life. Not the sort who talks about ideas in vague terms, but the sort who builds them properly. He was methodical and precise; everything had its place and especially tools ! His approach was simple in principle: do not act until you have thought everything through. That discipline ran through everything he did.
His leadership was quiet but powerful. The guidance he offered, whether on the project or in conversations about life and experience, could have meant so much to others: young people starting out, veterans learning new skills, anyone lucky enough to work alongside him. He had a way of showing by example how to think critically, plan carefully, and treat people with respect. That kind of leadership leaves a mark long after someone is gone.
Another quality that stood out was his patience and self control. I remember one video call when a marketing person joined the two of us and began pushing him to take the project in a direction he was clearly uncomfortable with. They were abrupt, dismissive of his answers and kept trying to push their own agenda. I could see from his expression that he was not impressed, but despite the fact that he had already made his position clear, they kept pressing anyway. And yet, he stayed calm and measured throughout the conversation. No raised voice, no irritation, just a steady refusal to be pushed into something he did not believe was right. He simply held his ground and they never appeared again after that call; in many ways that quiet firmness said far more about his character than any argument could have done.
Even in what turned out to be our final conversation, his positivity and thoughtfulness towards others was still there. We were talking about arranging a video call with someone we both felt could help move the project forward, and in the middle of that he began giving me the names of good builders and decorators for a friend who had recently bought a house in an area where he had once lived before getting married. He wanted to make sure she had reliable people to call, apologising that he could not go and help her himself due to his illness. Even then, when he was clearly not well, he was still thinking about how to help other people solve their problems. That was simply who he was.
Our video chats could be half an hour if we were just doing a quick catch up, or they could stretch from after lunch until it was dinner time; there were even quite a few times when we were still talking after 1am.
One minute we might be working through the detail of a marketing poster I had put together. The next he would open one of his many files and start showing me something he had documented from his previous work experience. Every lesson had been captured somewhere. Something he had learnt from around the world racing might suddenly appear as a design principle in his engineering work, a practical solution discovered in one environment carefully translated into another. He was constantly building on experience, refining ideas, improving systems. Nothing was ever random. Everything he did showed forward planning. Every idea came with built in redundancy, and often a redundancy for the redundancy if feasible.
As the weeks went by we spent hours working on his project. Real hours, the kind where you forget about everything else because the work itself becomes absorbing. We tweaked the business plan together, built lists of potential funders and philantropic organisations, looked at routes to get the first part of the project off the ground.
His spreadsheets were something to behold: they were not simple tables – they were living systems. Change something like wind speed and the entire financial model recalculated instantly. Every assumption flowed through the numbers in real time. It was the sort of thing that made you pause and think about the mind behind it.
I suggested that perhaps we could start small, something that could be funded via contacts and a bit of horse trading. He came up with the idea of building one of two longboats which would be used on the full build itself. This first phase of the project was something he planned to build himself from his garage: a working demonstration that would be sailed locally; something real that could prove both the project and its team before scaling up.
But the project was never just about engineering. He wanted to employ veterans, give young people work experience onboard, use sustainable materials and energy systems wherever possible; teach paying clients onboard about the ocean, its folklore, currents… so many things. The entire concept had been thought through carefully, not just in terms of technology but in terms of people and opportunities; sustainable futures – emphasis on the plural. Everything was to be planned properly and built properly.
Then sadly, everything stopped on Friday night…
Now I find myself looking at our shared task list. The one we used to keep track of every lead, every contact, every piece of research. One section still makes me smile and ache at the same time. He had created a heading called “Yvette’s ideas” – those of you who know me understand that I am full of random ideas; he never dismissed my suggestions.
He was a private man, so I will not mention his name here, even though he deserves to be recognised as the kind of person others could look up to. Some people chase attention; he never did. His focus was always on the work, on doing things properly, and on the people around him he cared about and who had helped him. In many ways that makes his contribution quieter than it should be, but no less important. The people who had the chance to know him, even briefly, or from what I talked about, will understand exactly the sort of character he was. A good person, doing things the right way, without fuss or self promotion.
My heart goes out to his beloved wife who will bring their first child into the world wishing he was by her side. Life can be so cruel in the way it rearranges things without warning, leaving people bereft. Yet even in the middle of that unimaginable loss, she showed the remarkable strength he spoke about. She messaged me from his phone the day after losing him. Yes the day after, saying something that I will carry with me for a long time. She thanked me for being a good friend to him, for believing in his project and how he truly valued the friendship he had with me. Those words and their timing matter more than she may ever realise.
I would love to be able to continue the project and realise his dream. But the truth is simple – I cannot. I do not have his technical ability. He understood the mechanics, the engineering and the systems thinking in a way that very few people do. Some people have ideas, he had blueprints.
So what now? That question has been sitting in my mind ever since. I cannot build the clipper ship, I cannot run the calculations the way he did. I cannot replace the mind that designed it all.
So for me, honouring him will be in remembering the way he worked: the care, the patience, his insistence on thinking things through properly before acting. He did things properly and thought about the people who would benefit from the work. That is rare: to plan better, to build better, to stand up for global values and decent behaviour, to leave things stronger than we found them. His dream may not come to life in the exact way he wanted, but in the examples he set.
I will continue to talk about the lessons he taught me, the standards he lived by, and the quiet example of his care, integrity and professionalism. He was someone who thought everything out deeply, acted deliberately, and cared for others while quietly building something meaningful. I am grateful for the time we shared, for the conversations, the work, and the laughter. He will be remembered, not just for his quiet brilliance, but for the kind of person he was and I am so glad I got to know him.
When one of my colleagues on an aerospace project had issues I thought he could solve, I turned to him and he would be there to listen and offer potential solutions. From sturdier patch designs to wide collars used on board ships that could be fitted around ground handling lines to deter rodents from chewing them, he always had one or more solutions.
He wasn’t afraid to hold back on his thoughts when I asked him about business decisions; I got honest replies which in turn supported important choices I have made about work. He would also turn to me for advice on fine tuning certain correspondence – a mutual professional support which is very rare to find. I miss this already…
He also understood how hard and lonely it can be to run a business, to lead a project against the tide. His persistence, his meticulous planning, and the way he never gave up in the face of obstacles will still guide me, quietly steering my decisions and reminding me to think carefully before acting. As I said to a close friend yesterday: “Maybe now I have a real “business angel” watching over me“. But at the moment, It’s a very small comfort in a world that feels emptier without him and the potential of the project he wanted us to realise.
Fair winds and following seas …
