Denys Rayner Denys Arthur Rayner DSC & Bar , VRD , RNVR ( 9 February 1908 – 4 January 1967 ) was a Royal Navy officer who fought throughout the Battle of the Atlantic . After intensive war service at sea , Rayner became a writer , a farmer , and a successful designer and builder of small sailing craft - his first being the Westcoaster ; his most successful being the glass fibre gunter or Bermudian rigged twin keel Westerly 22 from which evolved similar " small ships " able to cross oceans while respecting the expectations , in terms of comfort , safety and cost , of a burgeoning family market keen to get to sea . Before his death in 1967 , Rayner had founded , and via his pioneering GRP designs , secured the future expansion of Westerly Marine Construction Ltd - up until the late 1980s , one of Britain ' s most successful yacht builders . Early years . Denys Rayner was born in Muswell Hill in a Georgian house , on the outskirts of London , to Francis ( née Parker ) and Arthur Rayner , a master electrical engineer , who became a commodity broker moving with his family to West Kirby on the Wirral Peninsula and sending his son to Repton School between 1921 and 1924 . Flat feet kept Denys from entering the Royal Navy but not from pursuing a successful naval career . In October 1925 , he joined HMS " Eaglet " , Mersey Division of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve ( RNVR ) as a part - time midshipman with time to pursue his interest in exploring the rocky coast of the Western Highlands in a small boat of his own design . As an eight - year - old prep school boy , at the height of the First World War , Rayner was disappointed to be beaten for drawing an " infernal " U - boat sinking device in a school geometry book . " Diagrammatically portrayed , this spoiled the page - I can see that now " wrote the adult Rayner in the preface of his book " Escort : The Battle of the Atlantic " ( 1955 ) . At school Rayner , impressed that an uncle by marriage was an officer on " a real destroyer " , sketched a " continuous border of destroyers " in the margins of his school books . In later school years came " an endless stream of model destroyers . . . which really floated and were fitted with systems of propulsion . . . " Battle of the Atlantic . " I had already packed my bags , set my affairs in order and seen to the laying up of my yacht " wrote Rayner of his actions four days before the outbreak of World War II . By 1939 , partly as a result of a recognition by others of his gift for leadership and partly by insisting on specialising in navigation rather than gunnery , against standard advice to RNVR officers wishing advancement in the Royal Navy , Rayner qualified himself to command 14th Anti - Submarine Group comprising HMTs " Loch Tulla " , " Istria " , " Regal " , " Brontes " and " Davey " , a unit of armed trawlers patrolling the notoriously dangerous waters surrounding the main fleet base of Scapa Flow - a 6 by 20 mile stretch of sea between Scotland and the Orkney Islands where a high spring ebb can flow 8 knots against a westerly gale . His ' flag ' was aboard HMT " Loch Tulla " for whom Rayner selected skipper Lang - a Devon trawlerman he describes as knowing things " about the way of a ship which no one not trained in sail could have understood " . In September 1940 Rayner , was appointed to command a corvette , , but finding her incomplete , and another , , ready but without a commander , used all his skills of persuasion to get the command himself . " Verbena " , was the first long fo ' c ' sle and was , in Rayner ' s eyes , “ quite perfect ” . On " Verbena " , the nickname ' Ben ' , which stayed with him for the rest of his life , was used as Rayner ' s call sign . " Verbena " embarked on convoy duties between different escort groups before being assigned to B - 12 group , under Commander C D Howard - Johnson of " Malcolm " . During the winter of 1940 - 41 and throughout the summer " Verbena " operated with the group in the North Atlantic , before a refit in August 1941 . Following this " Verbena " was sent south to Freetown , then Cape Town , for operations in the South Atlantic , before being dispatched to the Far East . After the Japanese invasion of Malaya , and the fall of Singapore , " Verbena " was based at Colombo ; in May 1942 while heading for Karachi her boilers gave out as a result of constant high speed work and lack of cleaning and she had to be towed the last few hundred yards to a berth in Bombay for refit . After some months in India , where he made a number of horseback treks , Rayner and his crew came home . Just after Christmas 1942 , he was given the lead of an escort group , in command of the destroyer HMS " Shikari " , becoming one of the first RNVR officers in the Royal Navy ( along with Commander E N Wood of HMS " Atherstone " a year earlier ) to be so promoted . Rayner returned to familiar ground , with his group operating in the North Atlantic on convoy escort duty . In June 1943 he was to lead Operation Rosegarden , an attempt to hunt and kill U - boats as they crossed the Denmark Straits , but this was ultimately unsuccessful . In October 1943 Rayner was given command of , briefly joining B - 5 EG , led by " Havelock " , before being given an Escort Group to operate in the Channel against E boats in preparation for D - Day . Just a day after taking station at Plymouth , on 20 February 1944 , Rayner was with " Warwick " off Trevose Head when she was torpedoed , with the loss of 90 of her crew , by the submarine commanded by Kapitänleutnant Gustav Poel . He was picked up with other survivors by the steam trawler " Lady Luck " skippered by Victor Crisp . Instead of taking ' survivors leave ' after this experience , which had included being in the water as depth charges from a destroyer in pursuit of the U - boat exploded close by , Rayner , pressing Admiral Max Horton for " a destroyer with two funnels " , was given command of - " best - loved " of his wartime commands - joining B - 4 Escort Group led by " Helmsdale " on the Gibraltar run . Towards the end of 1944 he was appointed senior officer of a support group of s - 30th Escort Group - in command of and including " Portchester Castle " ( later to ' play ' " Saltash Castle " in " The Cruel Sea " ) , " Launceston Castle " and " Kenilworth Castle " . On 10 November 1944 Rayner ’ s group gained an asdic contact and in a swift well - executed manoeuvre attacked and sank a U - boat , later identified as U - 1200 . As the " Pevensey Castle " was returning to her base , her steering broke in a northerly gale off the mouth of the River Foyle . Rayner nearly lost his ship on the long sandy spit leading to Magilligan Point before hand steering was connected . He writes that at this point " The candle was burned out " . He sought three weeks leave of Max Horton who then posted him , in the months before V - E Day , to a senior staff role with Channel Command , Portsmouth , in the tunnel complex of Fort Southwick behind Portsmouth Harbour . Here , overseeing radar guided plots from deep underground in a way that would have been impossible at the start of the campaign , Rayner applied his specialist experience to the deployment of a large force of anti - submarine warships in the closing months of the war . Rayner speaks in " Escort : The Battle of the Atlantic " of his respect for one of his colleagues at the fort - First Officer Audrey Faith Parker , OBE , WRNS - for the seafaring experience she brought to her operational work . It was to her and her husband Gordon that Rayner , in 1946 , after a stint as temporary commander of a Naval Air station at Kirkistown near Cloughy on the east coast of Northern Ireland , sold his yacht , laid up in north Wales for the duration , and moved his household to the first of several farms in the English home counties . During a campaign that had lasted from 1939 to 1945 , Rayner ' s youngest son , Vyvyan , reckoned ( in April 2006 ) that his father took " as little as four or five weeks home leave in the whole period . " After 24 years with the ' wavy navy ' Rayner retired from the RNVR in 1949 . Decorations . Rayner ' s DSC was announced in the " London Gazette " of 29 December 1940 , dated 1 January 1940 , for the " hard and perilous task of sweeping the seas clear of enemy mines , and combating submarines " while commanding the trawler " Loch Tulla " . On 26 September 1941 it was announced that he had been Mentioned in Despatches ' for good services in action against enemy submarines ' while commanding HMS " Verbena " . On 23 March 1943 the " Gazette " announced the award of the Volunteer Reserve Decoration ( VRD ) . On 25 May 1945 he was awarded a bar to his DSC " for courage , skill and perseverance . . . in successful operations against enemy submarines . " Rayner was credited with the sinking of one U - boat on 11 November 1944 - " U - 1200 " , commanded by Hinrich Mangels , " to pay me back for " Warwick " " . In an escort group action the fatal depth charges were dropped by under Lieutenant R M Roberts , DSC , RNVR . Rayner , though at the time given credit for sinking or damaging an unidentified U - boat on 22 May 1941 ' , had doubts even then , as he had about an earlier incident while in charge of 14th Anti - Submarine Group on HMT " Loch Tulla " , sailing towards Scapa Flow . He writes of picking up a strong asdic signal north of the Humber on the UK east coast , a depth charging exercise and a pool of oil , and later he mentions “ thinking ” that his first DSC , announced on 1 January 1940 , was “ probably ” for this action “ off Flamborough Head ” . He was uncertain whether this involved a genuine sinking , writing of the greater “ difficulty ” of damaging the “ pressure hull ” of a “ modern submarine ” . Later Rayner refers to an action on 22 – 23 May 1941 when , in HMS " Verbena " , he engaged a U - boat on the surface after it had torpedoed the Dutch tanker " Elusa " and surfaced to inspect the burning wreck . The U - boat dived . Rayner depth charged a strong asdic contact , saw oil on the surface , lost contact and guided HMS " Churchill " , with deeper depth charges , to the same target , both ships remaining in the area until dawn on 24 May 1941 . In the back inside cover of " Escort " Rayner ' s map of Western Approaches shows the cross - swords symbol of an engagement and the words " U - boat damaged by " Verbena " 22 . 4 . 41 " . Many years later - 2006 - Gudmundur Helgason , researcher of the Battle of the Atlantic points out that " Elusa " was sunk by " U - 93 " " which certainly survived the attack " adding that " there were lots of those attacks reported ( often with seemingly very convincing evidence at the time ) that failed to sink or even damage an U - boat . Since 1955 there have been loads of revisions of U - boat fates , almost to this day even . " Writer . Having written features in the yachting press before the war , Rayner ' s career as an author really began in 1955 with a personal account of ' his ' war , called " Escort : the Battle of the Atlantic " published by Kimber , reissued by the Naval Institute Press ( 1999 ) . He would have been the first to admit the difficulty of discerning the thread of his own experiences in a conflict that ran for the duration of World War II , involved the loss of 63 , 000 Allied sailors and airmen , 30 , 000 merchant seamen and 43 , 000 U - boat sailors . It was only because Captain Stephen Roskill , official historian of the war at sea , became a family friend in the 1950s , and , over a merry evening of food and drink in the Rayner household , succeeded in overcoming Rayner ' s inhibitions on the subject , that the latter put pen to paper to record his particular experiences of that gigantic campaign . Except that for Rayner the sea was " neither cruel nor kind " , there are parallels between the war he describes in " Escort " and that of the fictional Commander Ericson in Nicholas Monsarrat ' s enormously successful post - war novel " The Cruel Sea " published at almost the same time as Rayner ' s book . In his editor ' s foreword to " Escort " , Stephen Roskill writes of Rayner ' s authority to speak on his subject : " I know of no other officer , let alone one of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve , who served continuously for more than five years in command of escort vessels ; nor of any other who graduated from a trawler at the very beginning to a corvette , then to a small destroyer , and finally to command of a group of the new and greatly improved war - built escort vessels . " Mike Raymond of the Flower Class Corvette ' s Association reports a portrait of Rayner ' with pipe and beard ' in the frontispiece of " Escort " - the picture at the start of this article emphasising this is more biography than history . Yet a 10 year perspective , enabled Rayner in 1955 , to weave his and his men ' s experiences into a larger account of the Battle of the Atlantic , recording , for example , a fleeting and enticing glimpse of the chief protagonist in a four - day sea battle that began with the sinking of Britain ' s finest warship and closed with the destruction of a German battleship that ended Hitler ' s use of large surface raiders against allied convoys . While escorting the homeward - bound convoy SC 31 , on board " Verbena " in company with Commander Bostock of HMS " Churchill " , Rayner spotted a big ship on the horizon hurrying southward : " . . . she was hull down and difficult to identify . I made to " Churchill " , ' Are you reporting what I think I see ? ' and got back the reply , ' Better not - identification by no means certain . Might cause confusion . Gather " Suffolk " has the situation in hand . ' " " Suffolk " and " Norfolk " were cruisers following the which , on 24 May 1941 had sunk on which Rayner had served as a midshipman for three months in 1932 . A year after " Escort " came Rayner ' s first novel , the story of a prolonged duel between a U - boat and a British destroyer - " The Enemy Below " - adapted in 1957 for a film by Dick Powell , in which the writer ' s destroyer " Hecate " became the USS " Haynes " - in actuality USS " Whitehurst " - while his British captain , John Murrell , became an American played by Robert Mitchum with Curt Jürgens playing Rayner ' s U - boat skipper , Kapitän von Stolberg . Powell displays Rayner ' s book at the start of the trailer of " The Enemy Below " . Some of the actual experiences described in the novel and later transferred to film can be read in Rayner ' s low - key account of his encounter between corvettes and " U - 1200 " off southern Ireland on 11 November 1944 between pages 224 and 228 of " Escort " . In his novel " The Long Fight " ( 1958 ) Rayner wrote about a three - day ship - to - ship engagement in the Indian Ocean during the Napoleonic Wars ; about tank warfare in " The Small Spark of Courage " ( 1959 ) ( titled " Valor " in US editions of the novel ) , and about convoy escort duty in " The Crippled Tanker " ( 1962 ) ( titled " The Long Haul " in the US ) . In 1966 , with Alan Wykes , he wrote " The Great Yacht Race " , an illustrated account of a millionaires ' yacht race from New York to Cowes in December 1866 . Between 1961 and 1963 Rayner also published books on sailing , safety at sea in small craft and starting motorboating . Designer of small boats . Though his father was a keen 6 - 10 metre racing yachtsman , Rayner preferred the idea of cruising . On 6 June 1937 , sailing his small boat out of Loch Fyne , he records passing " a ship which from the lines of her hull I think to have been the original " Blue Dragon " . . . if it were , it is poetic justice that I should meet her on my first cruise in my own designed ship in Scottish waters for it was her exploits as detailed in ' The Log of the " Blue Dragon " ' , by C . C . Lynam , read in " the library of a midland county preparatory school " that " first started the sailing canker " though " vows then made to sail my own ship to Scotland had to wait twenty years for fruition . " Starting with an 18 ' open boat , and progressing via a 16 ' half - decked day sailer to a small converted fishing yawl , followed by a converted ex - fishing boat and then the 14 ton Tredwen barge yacht " Pearl " - burnt out on her moorings - Rayner was at last , in 1936 , able try his hand at designing his own boat " after studying the ' How To ' articles in the Y . M . " " Robinetta " , a 4½ ton auxiliary gaff cutter , was built for him at the Rock Ferry yard of the Enterprise Small Craft Company , Birkenhead , and launched on 10 May 1937 . Elected in March 1935 to the Royal Cruising Club - ' an association of yachtsmen who prefer navigation to racing and are full of passionate interests ' ( Arthur Ransome 1912 ) - Rayner set out , in summer 1937 , to follow ' skipper ' Lynam ' s wake to the Western Highlands . Lynam ' s " Blue Dragon " was a small clinker built yawl of his own design , as was " Robinetta " , built on the Mersey , from where he sailed her to the Firth of Clyde . Thus Rayner , before he was 30 , ( and according to a self - description in his file at the Royal Institution of Naval Architects ( RINA ) ) became an amateur yacht designer and experienced small boat sailor . Between 1937 and 1938 Rayner completed two short cruises in " Robinetta " , sometimes with his wife - " E " - and sometimes with RNVR comrades , Dick Taudevin and W . H . Simcoe , writing meticulous logs of intricate exploration of sea lochs with the added excitement of swift and sometimes rough open water passages , including encounters with overfalls and squalls , entranced by the scenery of these complicated shores . These pleasures ceased abruptly with the start of the war . " Robinetta " was laid up on chocks for the duration at a yard in Beaumaris , N . Wales , and sold in 1946 . After the long war at sea Rayner moved with his family to a farm at Hook near Basingstoke in Hampshire , and then to another farm near Burghclere , south of Newbury in Berkshire , and gave his attention to farming , horse riding and writing . In 2006 the owner of their old home , Earlstone Manor Farm , recalls accounts of Denys and Elizabeth Rayner ' s children ' s " extraordinary and happy childhood here , and the huge generosity of the Rayners , who took in old shell - shocked warriors , German Jewish refugee children , and the unhappy son of a British fascist leader , who were all cared for , loved and given security , at a time when conditions were still very primitive here and the family themselves extremely deprived . " At Earlstone the Rayners were neighbours to the Roskills , and it was Captain S . W . Roskill who encouraged his neighbour to write down his recollections of the war . Rayner ' s eldest son recalls that , as a result , his father " started thinking about boats , the sea , and boat design all over again " . Publishing " Escort " , and then " The Enemy Below " , Rayner " gradually morphed back to where he had always wanted to be - in yacht design " . He built his younger son a dingy to row on a local lake . " When it was finished " , says Paul Vyvyan , " I was too big for it . " So his dad acquired a small yacht - a Mystic , sail number 2 , designed by Robert Tucker from C . E . Clark Boat Builders at Cornubia Yacht Yard at Cowes called " Orchid " - ostensibly for the boy , but he called it " our ship " , making her easier to sail by adding a new stern . In the late 1950s , a local manufacturer of plywood caravans asked Rayner to design a plywood dinghy to be offered with each caravan . As result of this collaboration Rayner started the Beacon Boat Company at a redundant turnery workshop in Donnington , a village on the River Lambourn north of Newbury , and applied all his enthusiasm and practicality to building and selling small family sailing boats of distinctive design . Wartime advances in new bonding techniques had made plywood reliable even when constantly immersed in sea water . Using mahogany frames and the new marine plywood laminated with resorcinol glue s , Rayner marked his return to the sea by building a 20 foot hard chine bilge keel gunter - rigged sloop - the " Westcoaster " - designed initially for a customer wishing to navigate the difficult waters and scarce harbours of the Bristol Channel , where Rayner had been torpedoed in 1944 . Rayner gave the Westcoaster " sitting head room for tall men " - rare in yachts so small - while ingeniously camouflaging the reverse sheer needed for such generous accommodation by carrying the decks out to the sides of the boat as he had with " Robinetta " 20 years earlier . Similarly all the Westcoaster ' s running rigging came back to the cockpit making her easy to handle single - handed . He sailed and demonstrated the first of such yachts , painted a rich royal international blue - often called Oxford Blue - enthusing about its good looks , its affordability , its practicality for weekend " pottering " and fitness for deeper waters despite a draft of no more than 2 ' 3 " ( 70 cm ) . This design ensemble was topped by Rayner ' s preference for the gunter rig , its short mast , compared to a Bermudian , making it easier to tow on a trailer , to lower and raise , for the bridges of inland waterways , as well as allowing a swift reef - by lowering the boom - in a squall . Rayner also wrote that he valued the greater ' lifting ' quality of a gaff or gunter mainsail as compared to the Bermudian main , prior to the wider use , with that rig , of masthead Genoas - headsails of greater area than the mainsail - which in Rayner ' s view , in 1962 , was ' the herald of rigs to come ' with ' great aerodynamic efficiency and with enormous lift ! ' , and returning , in effect , " to the lateen - shaped loose - footed sails of the Mediterranean but with a taut forestay replacing the heavy lateen yard . . . " A small number of Westcoasters were later modified by the addition of a small bowsprit , with the cutter rig giving an even greater sail area . Bilge or twin keels , a concept for many more years unfamiliar in America , allowed a boat to take the ground upright on a tripod comprising keels and a sturdy skeg , manoeuvre in shallow water , load and tow easily behind a family saloon , and be conveniently launched . Thus Rayner , developing a concept pioneered in 1922 by a fellow member of the RCC , Arthur Balfour , later Lord Riverdale , and became a key player in the expanding field of affordable chine plywood yachts , brilliantly popularised by Robert Tucker ' s Mystic , Debutante and Silhouette . Such a vessel could navigate canals and shallow estuaries including short - cuts through swatchways , take the ground safely and ' look after her crew ' in hard weather , close to and off shore . It was a specification aimed at the innovative concept of ' family sailing ' , creating , and responding to , the enthusiasm , pockets and holidays of a post - war generation unused to enjoying the sea as a place for recreation and adventure . Having founded Beacon Boats Co . Ltd . to make and sell Westcoasters - about 60 altogether - and then the Corvette , Rayner experimented with a new enterprise making GRP sailing dinghys . From this temporary project he embarked on the factory manufacture of an ideal family sailing boat expanding , in 1963 , to larger premises - temperature - and - humidity - controlled - as the firm of Westerly Marine Construction Ltd . , at Hambledon Road , Waterlooville near Portsmouth on the Solent , with himself as Chief Designer , having become , in 1964 , an Associate of the RINA . He recruited as his directors Kenneth Bates , Michael C . B . Hurd and David G . M . Sanders and Kenneth Todd , while Dodie Walker in Sales was regarded as integral to an enterprise Rayner was determined should attract customers who cared as much about his boats ' interior comfort and convenience as their sailing qualities , for which Rayner sought Lloyd ' s certification . Two skilled boatbuilders - affectionately esteemed by Rayner as ' the walrus ' and ' the carpenter ' - were recruited to do the vital job of building the pattern moulds basic to GRP production . GRP was still so recent that he had to be satisfied with a Lloyd ' s Series Production Certificate affirming that the 4½ - ton Westerly 22 – the company ' s first design – had been built under Lloyd ' s supervision including inspections and tests of hull strength and the factory conditions under which the moulded fibre glass used in construction went through the process , key to its long term integrity , of curing . Knowing that GRP yachts had not been around long enough to arrive at a proper assessment by Lloyd ' s of their durability , Rayner added exacting standards of his own to his designs , explaining why , after 40 years , such boats are still trusted by their owners . Westerly Marine Construction Ltd . grew to be Britain ' s biggest yacht building company , and during the 1970s , a leader in family yachts . When Rayner was overseeing the construction of his brilliant little Westerly 22 , he strengthened his friendship with Jack Hargreaves , who , as an enthusiastic populariser of " messing about in boats " , filmed " Young Tiger " - W22 68 - departing the Solent for America . Rayner ' s letter , dated 14 December 1965 , awaiting her young skipper , Hargreaves ' stepson , at a poste restante in Bridgetown Barbados , read " Welcome to the Caribbean and well done ! I think this is a justified remark because if you do not get this letter you won ' t have done so well ! I am so glad you have Susanna with you . I shall of course calm down anyone who gets jumpy because I have complete confidence in you and the boat . " " Young Tiger " , crewed by Simon Baddeley and Sue Pulford , telegrammed news of her arrival at Bridgetown on 5 January to Rayner at the 1966 London Boat Show with the words " EASY 29 DAYS . SIMON " . They had sailed 2900 miles from the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria to Barbados in 29 days . Peter Guinness , Rear - Commodore of the Royal Cruising Club , in awarding the RCC Challenge Cup , wrote of a winning cruise that ended in Miami USA on 17 April 1966 " in a small , or even very small , ship " . Achievement . Having led men and commanded ships in the Battle of the Atlantic , undoubtedly the most protracted and one of the most crucial of Britain ' s World War II campaigns , since it was about control of the nation ' s supply lines , Denys Rayner , who described himself , in his biographical account of the war in the Atlantic , as an ' amateur sailor ' , gave himself as much to the peace that followed , as he had to the war that won it . He died of cancer in January 1967 having seen his first two fibreglass designs - a Westerly 22 and a Westerly 25 ( " Lonesome Traveller " owned by Ann and Slade Penoyre ) - sailed across the Atlantic by relatively inexperienced seafarers of the kind he dreamed of encouraging to navigate wisely in deep waters . The photo of " Young Tiger " shows many of the qualities Rayner sought for his Westerly 22 - a shipshape ' baggywrinkled ' small craft for everyman moored close to palm trees overhanging a shallow Caribbean beach after an uneventful 29 day crossing of the Atlantic Ocean crewed by two student friends . Rayner ' s guidebooks for such adventurers include " Safety in Small Craft " , Coles , Harrap , De Graff ( 1961 ) and " Small Boat Sailing " , Collins Nutshell Books ( 1962 ) . Seacraft technologies , especially navigational aids , have been transformed since these books were written , yet they contain timeless wisdom about taking a small ship to sea and bringing her home - without fuss . In " Safety in Small Craft " Rayner writes : “ In any reasonable weather it is the diminutive size of the yacht which makes long passages under sail such thrilling affairs , and one of the reasons why I , for one , find the smallest possible craft the most rewarding ” as well , he added , as costing less . Ben Rayner ' s greatest peace time contribution lay in his approach to designing , building and selling such small craft . A fascination with making model destroyers at school evolved into the making of " Robinetta " in which for a few years he voyaged for pleasure - a pleasure which , after his long war service , he made available to thousands . Starting with " Robinetta " - based in 2006 on the River Orwell near Harwich and still sailing , and then the rebuilt " Orchid " to share with his youngest son , Rayner graduated via the one - off Corvette to the Westerly 22 , to the Westerly 25 , the Westerly 30 , the Windrush ( a re - worked W25 ) , and the Nomad ( a re - worked W22 ) . Applying the husbandry , and inventiveness , that characterised his years as a professional sailor , Rayner applied design and techniques , including the crucial process of curing now recognised as so vital to enduring fibre glass construction , to products that sold themselves . In the recent words of one of his sons , " He was delighted when the butcher , the baker and candlestick maker arrived at the London Boat Show in the early 60s and put down deposits in cash . Boats at that time were produced by 12 men at 6 vessels per annum . With 12 men we built 50 a year . Their yachts cost £6 , 000 . Ours were on a trailer for £1800 . " But if these small craft were swiftly made and so affordable , none left Rayner ' s factory unfit for the sea , of which he wrote " neither cruel nor kind . . . Any apparent virtues it may have , and all its vices , are seen only in relation to the spirit of man who pits himself , in ships of his own building , against its insensate power . " Rayner ' s home was in West Kirby until 1944 , after which the family moved south to Holt Farm , Hook , near Basingstoke , Hampshire , from where he moved to Earlstone Manor Farm , Burghclere , moving again in mid - 1963 to Hermitage Farm , Hermitage , both near Newbury in Berkshire . His last home , where he moved in late 1964 , was Quarry Farm , West Meon , Hants . He married Isabelle Elizabeth ( née Board ) in 1933 . They had a daughter , Clare , born 1938 , and two sons , Martin Drake born in 1934 and Paul Vyvyan born in 1948 , who scattered his father ' s ashes off Gilkicker Point .