Congratulations to Ian Nicolson C.Eng FRINA Hon. MIIMS, who – 81 years since leaving school early to start a yacht design apprenticeship – has been appointed MBE in the King’s Birthday Honours for services to sailing.
Ian, who has contributed to WaterCraft for over 20 years as author of his regular ‘Design Your Own Boat’ feature, has devoted his life to sailing, yacht design and surveying, publishing 27 books on the subject, including The Boat Data Book – now in its 8th edition and widely translated. He still sails competitively at the age of 97, racing on the Clyde near his home in Scotland.
After an apprenticeship with yacht designer Fred Parker in Poole, Dorset, during which time he first began to write for boat magazines, Ian moved to John Thornycroft’s shipyard in Southampton for his journeymanship. Realising that opportunities in 1950s weren’t plentiful, he bought a share in a 1910 ketch built in Norway, sailing her to Vancouver, Canada, via the Panama Canal – a journey described in Ian’s book The Log of the Maken.
There, Ian found success working for power boat designer Thornton Grenfell, before returning to the UK for family reasons. Back in Britain, Ian worked for naval architect Alan Buchanan, designing and surveying, until he was offered a partnership in the Scottish design office of Alfred Mylne, run by the original Alfred Mylne’s nephew of the same name. Ian undertook most of the survey work, eventually taking over the firm when Alfred Mylne died in the late 1970s. When he sold the business in 2007, Ian didn’t contemplate retirement, despite being in his late 70s. Instead, he went freelance, still working as a surveyor, designer and lecturer today.
A founder member of the Ocean Cruising Club, Ian has served as Port Officer for the Clyde since the Club first created the post in 1959, welcoming visiting cruising sailors for nearly 70 years. In his remarkable career, Ian has somehow found time to build several boats and yachts of his own, cruising the west coast of Scotland and further afield with his family.