Drascombe sailboats: one family's safety brief became an entire class of open boats
When John Watkinson's wife Kate asked him to build a boat safe enough to take the family sailing, her only real requirement was safety. The lug-rigged boat he hand-built in response, Katharine Mary, gave the world the Drascombe Lugger and, eventually, an entire family of small, open, trailerable day boats built to the same brief. Watkinson designed nearly all of it himself over the following fourteen years, and though the business behind the name has split, changed hands, and been rebuilt more than once since, more than 6,000 Drascombes have been built worldwide.
Origins and ownership
Watkinson had already run one boatbuilding business -- a yard at Bridgend on the River Yealm, built up shortly after World War II, producing small wooden lapstrake boats -- before he sold it in 1964 to work full-time as a designer and retired to a farm on Dartmoor called Drascombe Barton, which gave the range its name. Small Boats Magazine reports he based the Lugger's hull on fishing vessels that had worked the choppy waters of the English Channel. He wasn't persuaded that anyone besides his own family might want the boat until 1967; he built the first production Lugger at the farm that year, and Douglas Elliott trailered it to the London Boat Show the following January, where it sold within roughly half an hour of the doors opening.
The first wooden Luggers were built by Kelly and Hall of Noss Mayo, Devon, and then by John and Douglas Elliott, who went on to build the Longboat, Longboat Cruiser, Skiff and Peterboats in wood as well; by 1979 the Elliotts had built 200 wooden Luggers and were booking orders a year in advance. That run ended abruptly: John Elliott died of a heart attack at the boatyard on 4 July 1980, and Douglas wound the business up shortly afterward. Watkinson himself moved back to Noss Mayo in the 1980s and lived there until his death in 1997.
The fiberglass side of the business followed a separate, much longer path. Within a year of that first Lugger sale, Honnor Marine of Totnes, Devon -- founded in 1956 -- was already building the boat under license in GRP, with the first fiberglass Lugger appearing in 1969, while Watkinson gave the Elliotts exclusive rights to keep building it in wood. Honnor Marine had made and sold Drascombes for more than 30 years when, per Tim Altham, the company grew too large to survive a difficult trading year and went into liquidation in July 1997. That liquidation split the brand in two: the Drascombe trademark went to McNulty Boats Ltd, while Bob Brown -- who admired the boats and didn't want production to stop -- had his offer for Honnor Marine's remaining assets and moulds accepted within a week. Brown moved production to his own factory in Rochdale, obtained CE Mark certification across the range, and, lacking the trademark, renamed the boats "The Original Devon Range." Over the Browns' twenty years there, the operation built 380 boats, including the 2005 Cape Cutter 19, which Marine Industry News says became known as the fastest 19-foot gaffer in the UK. Bob and Norma Brown retired in December 2017, handing the business to Tim and April Altham, who carried it on as Honnor Marine Classics and later added the Cape Cutter 19's inboard-diesel version plus two more designs, the Tamarisk 19 and Windward Cutter. In April 2025, Marine Industry News reported the Swanage, Dorset-based company was for sale.
The trademark side ran its own, shorter course. McNulty Boats Ltd went into liquidation on 23 September 2002, the day after that year's Southampton Boat Show closed. Churchouse Boats obtained the production licence that same year, and Drascombe production has continued under its name since -- the company restored Watkinson's original Katharine Mary and exhibited it at the London Boat Show for the brand's 50th anniversary in 2017. The Lugger, Dabber, Longboat, Coaster, Gig and Drifter 22 remain in the Churchouse-built range.
The designers
Watkinson designed almost the entire core range himself, working from a brief set as much by his wife as by the sea: small enough to trail, simple enough to sail singlehanded, with dry footing to step ashore and no boom to strike anyone's head. His prototype originally carried a dipping-lug mainsail and sprit mizzen; finding the dipping lug difficult to handle, he reworked the rig into a boomless gunter yawl before the design went into production.
Only one other designer's name attaches to the range, decades later. When Churchouse Boats revived the long-dormant Drifter as the Drifter 22 in 2008, it went outside Watkinson's own drawings for the first time, commissioning Paul Fisher of Selway Fisher -- a firm new to Drascombe. Stewart Brown, who had taken over Churchouse Boats some years earlier, made sure the new boat still carried what Practical Boat Owner calls the Drascombe trademark features: a simulated lapstrake hull, forward-raked transom, wooden spars, tan sails, bowsprit, boomkin and low-aspect-ratio yawl rig. More than 30 were built before Brown's death in 2018.
Lines and generations
From the Lugger, the family grew quickly through the 1970s under Watkinson's own hand: the Longboat, a "stretched" version of the Lugger, reached full production in 1970; the 15ft 6in Dabber followed in 1972, a double-ended hull whose upper two planks flare out to a V-shaped transom; the Driver, an 18-foot open boat with a standing lug yawl rig and an inboard engine, arrived in 1974 but was withdrawn in 1978 once escalating engine-installation costs priced it out of reach; the Drifter reached the public in 1977 after a year of prototype trials; the Scaffie came out in September 1978 to instant success; and in January 1979 the Coaster replaced the earlier Cruiser Longboat, using the same hull under a completely redesigned deck and cabin. Decades later, in 2008, the Drifter 22 filled the gap left by that original Drifter, whose own production had ended around 1988.
Who Drascombe is for
Every model in the range traces back to the same brief Kate Watkinson set for her husband: small, trailerable, and safe enough for a family day out. That heritage still shapes who it suits -- trailer-sailors, estuary and coastal day sailors, and buyers drawn to a traditional, character boat over a modern cruising yacht. It also shapes what to expect from ownership: a lineage now built and supported across two separate companies, Churchouse Boats and Honnor Marine Classics, neither of which controls the whole family the way Watkinson once did.
