Bob Gordon's Boatbuilding 1936 - 2005

TO BE UPDATED...Bob started boatbuilding aged 16, with an apprenticeship to boatbuilder John Walker in Rushcutters Bay. After three months Bob told his boss "Mr Walker, I think I know enough now' and took up a lease on the site of what is now the Cruising Yacht Club and commenced building his first dream...the famous John G Hanna's 30ft Tahiti Ketch. He names her SEA FEVER after the John Masefield poem. As a teenager he went on to build a few more vessels until he was swept up in WWII. On return he took up building in Lavender Bay in the mid 1940's, then from 1950 to 1967 at a site leased from Woodley's on the western side of Berry's Bay (known to old-timers as Torpedo Bay), then returned to Lavender Bay leasing land from Neptune Engineering from 1970 to 1988. From the late 1990's Bob, with his son Rob build several yachts to 28ft in an archway workshop beneath the railway viaduct.