Jeremy Charles Rogers, (16 September 1937 – 12 October 2022) was a British boat builder and sailor, based in Lymington, Hampshire, and the manager of the

Jeremy Rogers Limited Jeremy Rogers Ltd. is a British boatyard based in Lymington. Founded by English boatbuilder and sailor Jeremy Rogers in 1961, it is currently known for construction to order of the classic Contessa 32 design, and refurbishment of Contessa and ...

boatyard. During his 50-year career Rogers was responsible for the construction of a large number of well-known yachts and established himself as a first-class yachtsman.

Early life

Evacuated to rural Canada during the Second World War, Rogers and his brothers passed the long winters making model boats, but it was back in England that Rogers built his first proper dinghy at the age of ten whilst at Clayesmore School in Dorset. Then, after serving his apprenticeship with Jack Chippendale MBE as a traditional wooden boatbuilder, he set up in business in 1961 at the age of 23. Despite his training in wooden boatbuilding, he was one of the first to appreciate the potential of

glass-reinforced plastic Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass cloth ...

(GRP), and he went initially into the production of GRP dinghies, followed in 1966 by a modified GRP

Folkboat The Nordic Folkboat (Swedish: Nordisk Folkbåt) is a Swedish sailboat that was designed by and Tord Sundén as a racer- cruiser and first built in 1942. Even though Sundén drafted the plans with design ideas provided by Iversen, Sundén was ...

called the

Contessa 26 The Contessa 26 is a 7.77 meter (25.6 ft) fiberglass monohull sailboat, brought about when Jeremy Rogers, with a background in traditional wooden boatbuilding along with one of his Folkboat customers, David Sadler, created a modified vers ...

. This was an instant success, as was the subsequent Contessa 32, designed in collaboration with David Sadler.

Seventies heyday

The Contessa 32 was voted the London Boat of the Show in 1972, and with approximately 650 of them already in the water, demand is such that after 40 years the yacht is still in production. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Rogers' company included five purpose-built factories in Lymington and a workforce of nearly 200 employees. Production included Contessas ranging in size from the traditional 26 to the Doug Peterson designed grand prix 35s, 39s and 43s, many of which were exported to a worldwide market. In 1978 and in conjunction with the late Colin Chapman's

Lotus Lotus may refer to: Plants *Lotus (plant), various botanical taxa commonly known as lotus, particularly: ** ''Lotus'' (genus), a genus of terrestrial plants in the family Fabaceae **Lotus flower, a symbolically important aquatic Asian plant also ...

car team, Rogers developed vacuum assisted resin

transfer moulding Transfer molding (BrE: transfer moulding) is a manufacturing process in which casting material is forced into a mold. Transfer molding is different from compression molding in that the mold is enclosed rather than open to the fill plunger resul ...

, which was used on the Doug Peterson designed OOD 34.

The sailor

Apart from boat building Rogers has made a significant contribution to the world of yacht racing. In 1974 he skippered his Contessa 35, ''Gumboots'', to take the international

One Ton Cup The One Ton Cup is a trophy presented to the winner of a sailing competition created in 1899 by the Cercle de la voile de Paris (CVP). Synopsis The One Ton Cup regattas were at the beginning of races between one-tonner sailing dinghies, acc ...

trophy, but in so doing he and his crew took time out of one of the offshore races to rescue a family from a sinking life-raft – for this he was voted Yachtsman of the Year (and the international racing rules were subsequently changed to allow for redress in such circumstances). In 1977 and 1979 he and his crew competed as members of the British Admirals Cup Team, and in '77 Rogers' Contessa 43, ''Moonshine'', was the top scoring boat. Admirals Cup Yachts must compete in the Fastnet Race as part of the series, but in the

1979 Fastnet race The 1979 Fastnet Race was the 28th Royal Ocean Racing Club's Fastnet Race, a yachting race held generally every two years since 1925 on a 605-mile course from Cowes direct to the Fastnet Rock and then to Plymouth via south of the Isles of Scil ...

this ocean race encountered near hurricane conditions, which caused one of the worst disasters in yachting history: many yachts were lost and 15 people died during the race. Consequently, the race results were understandably insignificant, but Rogers' Contessa 39, ''Eclipse'', came in second overall to Ted Turner's ''Tenacious'', a yacht twice her size. The following year Rogers received his

MBE Mbe may refer to: * Mbé, a town in the Republic of the Congo * Mbe Mountains Community Forest, in Nigeria * Mbe language, a language of Nigeria * Mbe' language, language of Cameroon * ''mbe'', ISO 639 code for the extinct Molala language Molal ...

from H.M. the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

Later life and death

After setting up in business again following the bankruptcy of his original company, Rogers has concentrated on building new Contessa 32s and the complete refurbishment of many of the other boats built at the former yard. Two of these refurbishments were his own Contessa 26, Rosina of Beaulieu, and Contessa 32, Gigi. Rosina, sailed by Rogers and his three sons, was uniquely three times winner of the coveted Gold Roman Bowl for overall winner of the

Round the Island Race The Round the Island Race is an annual yacht race around the Isle of Wight. It starts and finishes in Cowes, and is organised by the Island Sailing Club. The course is about long. It was first held in 1931, it was sponsored by JP Morgan Asset ...

in 2002, 2003 and 2006. ''Gigi'' had become famous in 1984, when she was sailed by Americans, John Kretschmer and Ty Techera, in record time around Cape Horn; Kretschmer then wrote ''Cape Horn to Starboard'' about the adventure. Rogers purchased ''Gigi'' in 2005 and restored her to new condition. Rogers died from complications of Alzheimer's disease and COVID-19 on 14 October 2022, at the age of 85, during the

COVID-19 pandemic in England The COVID-19 pandemic was first confirmed to have spread to England with two cases among Chinese nationals staying in a hotel in York on 31 January 2020. The two main public bodies responsible for health in England are NHS England and Public ...

References

External links