Topic: Contessa history (re-post)

Re: Contessa history
I've seen so many different accounts of the Contessa history that I decided to chat with the source, Jeremy and Fiona Rogers, who built the first Contessa in Lymington, Dorset.  They built about 400 Contessa 26s in the 10 years from 1966 to 1976, before selling the moulds.

By the way, Practical Boat Owner (Feb. 2012) has a profile of David Sadler, who designed the Contessa 26 and 32 with Jeremy Rogers.  Among other fascinating details, it pointed out that Sadler's full-time job at the time was designing Chieftain tanks for the British army.  Perhaps that explains why the Contessa 26 is so solid!

Fiona Rogers sent me the following summary in an attempt to correct some of the misinformation that has been floating around.



From: Fiona Rogers <fiona.rogers@jeremyrogers.co.uk
There are quite a few inaccuracies (in some published accounts), especially about the disposal of the Contessa 26 moulds in 1977, when we decided to sell them to Chris Carrington, who ran a small yard in Lymington; he then sold the moulds to Maclan Marine in Exeter, Devon, but they did not continue building for long. 

Our decision to sell the moulds was due to the fact that these little boats were too labour intensive to be profitable at a time when we were building a range of more modern and larger performance cruiser-racing yachts designed by Doug Peterson. 

The Canadian Contessa 26 moulds were shipped out to (Toronto-based) JJ Taylors in 1972/3; a year later we sold them a set of Contessa 32 moulds.  This purchase by JJ Taylors was not as a result of our company ceasing trading.  We were very profitable throughout the 1970s.  Our company folded in 1982, when the bank made a policy decision regarding its boatbuilding customers to call in all overdraft facilities; this came at a time when we had a full order book and were tooling up to build the Australian America's Cup contender (which we then never built). 

The company was sold by the receivers for a fraction of its value, but the new owners failed to keep it going.  We started up again from scratch early in 1985, and we now restore and provide advice and spares for all the Contessa range of yachts as well as building a few bespoke Contessa 32s. 

Jeremy and Fiona Rogers
January, 2012