Audio clip 4 available here on audio player.
Mark Sansom’s passion has always been boats. He knew from a young age it was his calling. His father had boats, and his childhood memories are full of rowing boat adventures across the Warren. After being made redundant from his first boat building job and applying his skills across diverse trades to earn a living, he took matters into his own hands and began cementing his name in the boat building business. In this recording, he reflects on his decision to return to boats and his passion for building and repairing boats.
This trail marker is situated beside the Exe Estuary signs that look up-river over the boatyard on the right hand shoreline at the entrance to the Imperial Recreational Ground (Royal Avenue).
What 3 Words: ///vessel.devotion.mule
Mark: I’ve been in Exmouth all my life. Obviously after school I went to work for a local boat yard. I’ve always had a passion in boating. Father had boats, when we were young. You’d go out, learn to row and learn to sail. We used to, back in the day – it’s deemed a bit dangerous these days – but back in the day as kids, we would just finish school, we’d get our rowing boat and we’d row across The Warren, which is across the spit, across the other side. It’d get big, strong tides. We’d work our tides and we’d row it. Our parents wouldn’t even know we are doing it. In this day and age, it’s not such a safe thing to do because the river’s a lot busier now. But when we were kids, we used to camp on The Warren and that sort of thing, do it in your summer holidays.
I must have been 16 or 17, I went to work for Dixon & Sons, local boat builders. Back in the day, there was two boat builders. There was Dixon’s and Lavis’s. Dixon’s, that I worked for, we did a lot of trawlers, wooden trawlers. Which was known, the White Fish Authority, which is obviously a government funding for fishermen to purchase boats. We would build boats with the White Fish Authority approvals and standards, etcetera. I was there for probably about seven years. Then circumstances changed, predominantly really, the actual industry of building wooden fishing boats came to an end really. All went with fiberglass and steel. Boats got bigger. All the trawlers now, you see all the trawlers these days are so big that there isn’t a need for wooden boats.
When I was made redundant from Dixon’s and I went off and did different things, I went and worked for Sir John Kennaway in, what’s it called, Kennaway Estate up at Fairmile. I worked for him two days a week. I did window fitting three days a week. I did a bit of chippy work. So I did a varied range of different things. Tractor mending, I just fixed tractors. Which has been good stead for running my business over the years, because I learned a lot of skills that I didn’t have before, and it was a really good thing to do. But it still boiled down at the end of the day that I still want to do something with boats. That’s my passion really. Although I went and did other things, I came back to the boats really and dropped everything else. Just stuck at what I know, really.
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