yacht
A yacht is a sailing or power vessel used for pleasure, cruising, or racing. There is no standard definition, though the term generally applies to vessels with a cabin intended for overnight use. To be termed a , as opposed to a , such a pleasu ...
sman,
boat builder
This is a list of boat builders, for which there is a Wikipedia article.
Motorboats (<50 feet)
* American Skier
*
, and engineer. He has won national and world championships in many racing dinghy classes, as detailed below.
Turner was originally apprenticed to Souters in Cowes, Isle of Wight, building
International 14
The International 14 is a British racing sailboat, crewed by two sailors. The class was established in 1928.
The boat is a developmental sailing class and so the design rules and the boats themselves have changed dramatically over time to keep ...
s and
Flying Fifteen
The Flying Fifteen is a British sailboat that was designed by Uffa Fox as a one design racer and first built in 1948.Sherwood, Richard M.: ''A Field Guide to Sailboats of North America, Second Edition'', pages 106-107. Houghton Mifflin Compan ...
s. When they stopped that type of work, Turner went to work for
Spud Rowsell
Peter "Spud" Rowsell (1943-2021) was a yachtsman and boatbuilder based in Exmouth, Devon, England. Amongst many racing successes, Rowsell won the Merlin Rocket Class Championships at Abersoch Wales in 1978, crewed by Jon Turner, with a series of ...
, a boat builder in
Exmouth
Exmouth is a port town, civil parish and seaside resort, sited on the east bank of the mouth of the River Exe and southeast of Exeter.
In 2011 it had a population of 34,432, making Exmouth the 5th most populous settlement in Devon.
Histo ...
, with whom he won the Merlin Rocket Championships in 1974 and 1978. Turner then crewed
Phil Morrison Phil Morrison may refer to:
* Phil Morrison (yacht designer) (born 1946), British yacht designer
* Phil Morrison (director), American film and television director
* Phil Morrison (driver) (born 1977), British race driver
* Phil Morrison (baseball ...
to win the Fireball World Championships in 1981 at Weymouth. Over a fifteen-year period, Turner won the British Merlin Rocket National Championship twice as crew (1974 and 1978) and four times as helm (1983, 1984, 1987, and 1988).
Boat building
After ten years working with Rowsell, Turner left to start his own boat building business in 1980, based near
Cullompton
Cullompton () is a town and civil parish in the district of Mid Devon and the county of Devon, England. It is north-east of Exeter and lies on the River Culm. In 2011 the parish as a whole had a population of 8,499 while the built-up area of ...
, Devon, planning to build as his first boat a new Fireball, to sail with Phil Morrison. However, for business reasons, Morrison was obliged to sail a new Fireball built instead by Rowsell (with which Morrison and Turner then won the 1981 World Championships), leaving Turner with an empty order book. Turner then found the first two orders for his fledging business—with Morrison's help—for a National Scorpion 1812 "New Wave" for Andrew Mercer, which started the process of significant development within that class's One-Design rules. The following year, he built a
Merlin Rocket
The Merlin Rocket is a dinghy sailed in the United Kingdom. It is an active class, now with over 3700 boats built.
The boat designed around a box rule, meaning that all class boats need to be within a certain length and width, but can be any sh ...
3260 "The Feet", a Morrison-designed NSM2, with which Andy Street won the Class Championships in 1981. With his first two boats, Turner demonstrated his skill in building high-performance wooden racing dinghies, and that status is validated by the
National Maritime Museum
The National Maritime Museum (NMM) is a maritime museum in Greenwich, London. It is part of Royal Museums Greenwich, a network of museums in the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site. Like other publicly funded national museums in the Unite ...
record on "The Feet", now part of the National Small Boat Collection.
Championships
Turner's racing results include:
* 6x Merlin Rocket National Champion
* 3x Scorpion National Champion
* 1973
Albacore
The albacore (''Thunnus alalunga''), known also as the longfin tuna, is a species of tuna of the order Perciformes. It is found in temperate and tropical waters across the globe in the epipelagic and mesopelagic zones. There are six distinct s ...
World Champion
* 1981 Fireball World Champion
* 1985
Flying Dutchman
The ''Flying Dutchman'' ( nl, De Vliegende Hollander) is a legendary ghost ship, allegedly never able to make port, but doomed to sail the seven seas forever. The myth is likely to have originated from the 17th-century Golden Age of the Du ...
National Champion
* 1991 International 14 World Champion
* 1993 International 14 Prince of Wales Cup winner
* 1993 International 14 European Champion