Jon Turner is a British

yacht A yacht () is a sail- or marine propulsion, motor-propelled watercraft made 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 ...

sman, boat builder, 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 Cowes () is an England, English port, seaport town and civil parish on the Isle of Wight. Cowes is located on the west bank of the estuary of the River Medina, facing the smaller town of East Cowes on the east bank. The two towns are linked b ...

, Isle of Wight, building International 14s and Flying Fifteens. When they stopped that type of work, Turner went to work for Spud Rowsell, a boat builder in

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, 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 (basebal ...

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 2021, the parish as a whole had a population of 10,071, while the built-up area o ...

, 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 One-design racing is a racing method which may be adopted in sports using complex equipment, whereby all vehicles have identical or very similar designs or models, avoiding the need for a Handicapping, handicap system. Motorsport One-make racing ...

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 3800 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 Unit ...

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

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World Champion * 1981 Fireball World Champion * 1985

Flying Dutchman The ''Flying Dutchman'' () is a legendary ghost ship, allegedly never able to make port, but doomed to sail the sea forever. The myths and ghost stories are likely to have originated from the 17th-century Golden Age of the Dutch East India C ...

National Champion * 1991 International 14 World Champion * 1993 International 14 Prince of Wales Cup winner * 1993 International 14 European Champion

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Turner, Jon English male sailors (sport) British boat builders Living people Year of birth missing (living people)