Iain Woolgar & Berthon 1974 – 2025

We celebrate Iain Woolgar’s exceptional 51-year career at Berthon. During Iain’s half century of  service to Berthon customers, he has demonstrated unwavering dedication, technical aptitude, and an instinctive ability to navigate the complexities of marine engineering.

Iain’s career at Berthon started in 1974 with a four-year indentured marine engineering apprenticeship. After qualifying as a skilled engineer, which included passing his City and Guilds exams, he worked on both yachts and commercial vessels, engine servicing, welding and fabrication. Projects of note included 75’ wooden motor yacht Silver Cavalier for Mr Showering, founder of Babycham, on which Iain fabricated new silencers, installed new plummer blocks and refurbished the stabilisers. Other interesting projects in the 1970s included fabricating new water jackets for the GM V8 diesels on 110’ motor yacht Kristina, and servicing the Gardner straight eight diesels engines on the 80’ steel motor yacht Fairwood, the last of these engines off the production line.

In 1984 Ian was promoted to chargehand, and he started supervising refits and new builds for commercial customers. He was leading hand on Berthon’s build of three Arun class lifeboats for the RNLI, and also supervised the engineering labour on all the HM Customs patrol boat refits.

Promoted again in 1987 to engineering foreman, Ian’s next big project was Berthon’s build of the 80’ motor yacht Dalvina. Then, in the early 1990s, he initiated the engineering on Berthon’s RNLI Severn class lifeboat builds, the start of a 20-boat production run, plus 3 more finished for other boat yards (Halmatic, Souters and FBM).

Iain was appointed project manager in 1996, moving from workshop to office. Managing a few yacht refits was followed by taking over the Severn build programme plus managing multiple RNLI lifeboat refits and emergency repairs.  He then managed the major rebuild of the 123’ sailing yacht, Alexa, a testament to his strategic intelligence and leadership skills. Iain has more recently focussed on commercial refits and repairs for diverse customers such as RNLI, MoD, Government of Jersey, DEFRA, Port of Poole, survey companies, and is currently managing Berthon’s five-year ABP support contract.

Throughout his Berthon career, Iain’s passion for the marine industry has remained strong. He values his experience, and is committed to ongoing learning, sharing his wealth of knowledge acquired over five decades with the younger generation of engineers and project managers, for a time acting as apprentice manager. The Woolgar legacy at Berthon extends further: Iain’s grandfather was a Berthon seasonal (winter and spring) painter, and his father was a Berthon joiner. Iain’s sister and both his sons have also worked at Berthon.

Dominic May, Director at Berthon, commented “Iain has achieved at every level and is currently a very valuable Berthon senior manager in charge of marine engineering. Forthright, decisive, and technically brilliant, Iain is a fantastic Berthon servant who makes things happen. Everyone respects him for what he has achieved. Several Berthon engineers have said to me ‘I want to be the next Iain Woolgar’; what a legacy.”