The History of Hunter Boats: Peter Poland’s British Boatbuilding

Peter Poland helped set up Hunter Boats, one of the most successful British boatbuilders of recent years. He looks back on the ups and downs of building the business.

My early sailing experiences came about because my paternal grandfather Kenneth Poland owned successful syndicates in Lloyds of London. He had done very well there and owned a 63ft Yawl called Lara. She was designed for him by Robert Clark in time for the last Fastnet Race before World War 2. I was born in 1945 and 16 years later I was learning to pull on Lara’s strings. I had also commandeered a Firefly dinghy on a Yorkshire lake and put it through its paces. I didn’t capsize… so all was well.

After graduating from the Queen’s College, Oxford I realised I needed to get a job. My family had its roots in insurance and I thought I should follow that path and got despatched to a firm called Glanvill Enthoven to ‘study insurance’. I wasn’t very good at it! Meanwhile an old friend of mine from school and university, Anthony Brunner, had gone to work for ICI. After a year, both of us had itchy feet so we teamed up to buy a 25 footer and set off across the Atlantic in 1968. Why not? We pooled our savings, cashed in pension schemes and spent a total of around £1,400 on a Buchanan-designed Wind Elf Mk2 built in 1954 by William King in Burnham-on-Crouch. She was effectively a reverse sheer transom-sterned Folkboat derivation. She looked after us very well and we made it to Barbados and sold our trusty yacht. After briefly returning to the insurance business, I once again resigned and took up boatbuilding and sailing. 

The First Hunter Boats

In the early days, Hunter Boats was called the Essex Boat Company and run by John Chardin and his son Derek. Together they succeeded in building quality craft designed by Oliver Lee. They moulded the hull and deck of what became the RYA National Squib. Derek was a skilled glassfibre laminator and structural designer and his father was an able accountant. The 1967 RYA National Squib was first moulded by the Essex Boat Company (predecessor to Hunter Boats Ltd) and the shallow draft (triple fin keelboat) version – the Sandhopper in 1970.  Oliver Lee marketed the Squibs ordered in the UK while Hunter Boats were given the Export market.

The first Hunter – the Hunter 19 – was also originally moulded by the Essex Boat Company and was based on this same Squib hull and keel with a new look deck and coach roof plonked on top. My uncle – Michael Poland – was a keen JOG racer (Junior Offshore Group). While wandering around the London Boat Show, he spotted the Squib and asked Oliver Lee whether this open keelboat would convert into a Cruiser-Racer design. When Oliver asked what he would call such a boat, Michael said his second favourite hobby was hunting, so how about the Hunter class? And so the Hunter 19 was born.

The most famous Hunter 19 was undoubtedly David Blagden’s Willing Griffin. David decided he would like to sail the smallest ever yacht in the OSTAR transatlantic Single-Handed Race. Oliver Lee built David a slightly modified 19 and then David engaged the famous Blondie Hasler in discussions (and arguments) as to why a 19 footer couldn’t be allowed to compete in the 1972 OSTAR. Despite successive storms, David got there in one piece and produced a very dramatic and readable book called Very Willing Griffin.

At around the same time Oliver had also designed the Ajax 23 racing keelboat, fleets of which still race out of St Mawes, and Royal Harwich YC. The Ajax inspired its builder to add a lid and Hey Presto; an Achilles 24 took shape in 1968 and eventually gained much popularity.

Then came the Oliver Lee-designed lifting keel 16ft Hunter 490 and 23ft Hunter 701 which had a fin or lifting keel. My uncle Michael bought a Hunter 701 as a successor to Havoc, his original Hunter 19.

At this point I set up a company called Channel Yacht Services Ltd and employed a small team at Hambrook Marine to finish these three Hunter models on a sub-contract basis. Then I took a stand at an early Southampton Boat Show and was ably assisted by an early Hunter owner called Dave Deadman. It worked a treat and we actually sold some boats.

Shortly after this, I got a phone call from Hunter Boats. They offered me the chance to join the company and take on the sales and marketing side of the business. Why not I thought? It should be more fun than Lloyds of London. Derek and I subsequently bought out his father, who had emigrated to New Zealand.

Birth of the Hunter Sonata

The Hunter Sonata was one of the designs that really put us on the map. The boat was built between 1976 and 1990 and we made over 400 models during that time. To cut a long story short, at a later Southampton Boat Show I fell for two quarter-tonners. Both had ample accommodation and great boat speed. One was designed by a Kiwi called Ron Holland and the other was a multi chine design by David Thomas and called Quarto. 

Luckily I had a friend who knew David Thomas well. He arranged a meeting at the Southampton Boat Show and I asked David about a round-hull version of Quarto. The RYA National Sonata One Design was the result. Not only did she sail very fast; we jacked up David’s coachroof design a bit to give her more space down below. David said it made her look prettier!

In 1975 we went to our first ever Earl’s Court Boat Show that winter with a Hunter 19 Europa (also with an elegant raised roof line to give more space below) and sold several Sonatas off the drawings. It was take-off time for Hunter Boats. 

The Hunter Boats Business Expands

Next winter David approached us with a bigger Sonata sister (the Impala 28 OOD) and the smaller lifting keel Hunter Medina 20. The RORC then encouraged three sizes of Offshore One Designs and the Impala 28 was awarded the small-size slot of these three OODs. It duly took off. The OOD 34 built by Jeremy Rogers was the ‘big’ OOD and an Elvstrom design took the middle slot. 

The RYA National Sonata, Impala 28 OOD and Medina 20 classes all took off and sold like hot-cakes. At that time, we introduced ‘home completion versions’ that helped boost speed of manufacturing. We were up to around three full sets of mouldings per week. Working flat-out, our laminators could mould three hull/deck units a week depending on the size. Hunter Boats was also amongst the first to incorporate Kevlar fibres into production racers. 

Next on the Hunter agenda, we asked David to design fast twin-keel variants of his Hunters. He drew in a breath and said “I’ll think about it”, adding “You do realise that quick twin-keelers are few and far between and designing two quick keels to go on one hull will take time.”

David came up trumps – designing angled-in twin keels with a splay equivalent to typical heeling angles of each model to ensure stiff sailing and to cut down on leeway. It did not take him long to also add ‘bulbed bases’ to these keels.

They sailed extraordinarily well for twin keelers. On one stormy Round the Island Race, the twin keel Hunter Horizon 32 ‘motor-sailer’ with an enclosed wheelhouse won its division in the race. Z Spars mast maker and successful East Coast sailor David White could not believe the carnage going on around us. Then he asked how many rescue helicopters normally took part in the day’s fun as he steered the boat around several yachts in trouble.

From here it was a case of expanding the range over time and improving and refining the existing yachts. We continued our close relationship with David Thomas who came up with some splendidly innovative designs. The Hunter Channel 27 perpetuated David Thomas’s aft chines seen in Quarto. These added extra space in the stern cabin and – David added mysteriously – “Water likes chines. They tell it which way to go.” 

A Whale of a Time 

At around the same time, David Thomas asked me if I would like to build a modern take on the Whalers he used to sail in New Zealand. When he was young, David worked for the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand who had owned more than 350 ships and had been the subject of a number of books. They also owned a fleet of Whalers for training and racing.

David’s new offering had twin unstayed masts, one of which was a hinging mast in the bow. It had a lengthy cockpit, a centreboard with stub twin keels either side and a surprisingly spacious interior with an enclosed aft heads. And it had a canoe stern. The twin-masted version was called the Hunter Liberty 22 and the single gaff-rigged version the Hunter Minstrel 23. Both proved very popular with their Thomas performance, versatility and adaptability. They were also easy to trail and sail. Ultimately, David Thomas had a knack of getting things right – you could also see that in his larger Sigma designs.

Hunter Winding Down

My business partner died suddenly aged 58 at the turn of the century. I had two choices. Buy his widow’s 50% which she inherited from her husband. Or we could sell the company and share the proceeds. We chose the latter. Running the show without my erstwhile business partner would never be the same after around 30 years working together. So we sold the concern to Cornish Crabbers who changed its name to Select Yachts in the process. It also took over production of our Stephen Jones-designed Mystery 35. Sadly Select Yachts went out of business around four years later, but Cornish Crabbers are now back in business.

There are very few other UK builders of sub-30ft cruising yachts. And some modern hull shapes have a tendency to broach upwind. It’s amazing how many designers have re-discovered ‘chines’. These add volume to aft cabins and reduce the tendency to broach going to windward. In short, they help to restore directional stabilty that was lost to extra space in wide sterns.

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