Paul Manning - a
brief history of time...
 For
the Musto Performance Skiff class, Paul Manning is known
to most, but for those who don’t know him, he’s the
tall one you see rushing around helping people get their
boats sorted at events! We asked him for a brief run
down of his sailing and associated history.
Paul was first introduced to sailing by
his parents at the age of 6 months. If he were Ben Ainslie
it would be nice to think that at 7 months he knew what
he was doing, but 37 years later he cannot remember,
and still doesn’t know what he is doing !
His first real venture into sailing came
when; at the age of 6 he helped his Dad build their
first Mirror dinghy. From then on crewing and helming
became a regular weekend activity, and Paul progressed
to a point where he was winning junior club events.
A house move brought Paul to actually sailing at Burnham,
where he joined the competitive Burnham Sailing Club
Cadet fleet, initially crewing, and then helming with
continued local and National success, until he couldn’t
get under the boom !
Paul then joined the large Laser fleet,
and immediately took to racing against the older sailors,
winning East Coast Championships, and Burnham Weeks.
At age 15, Paul started racing in the Squib fleet, not
something most sailors maybe proud of, but at the time
it gave Paul the opportunity to race regularly in fleets
of 40 + boats on the river, and over 100 at National
Championships. He was soon at the front, and won Championship
races as helm and crew, as well as winning overall in
‘95 and ’96.
At that time, Paul had finished a Civil
engineering degree, and had been asked by Tony Allen,
the owner of the manufacturing arm of Holt Allen to
work for him. A considerable amount of his time was
taken up working with Poul Richard Hoj Jenson the owner
of Petticrow Boats, and multiple Olympic Gold medallist,
developing the Dragon. This inevitably led to crewing,
and there are winter memories of sailing up and down
the River Crouch in the snow tuning the first Etchell’s
prior to Poul winning his first World Championship at
his first attempt.
Paul on the other hand was tied up with
other things, so missed out on that one. However, he
did manage to win French and Belgium National Dragon
Championships.
At the same time Paul started designing
gear for Tim Tavinor and Luca Devoti’s early Finn’s,
and made the move to full time employment with that
team soon after. Soon Paul and Tim started on the development
of the Musto Performance Skiff along with designer Joachim
Harpprecht, and Paul’s sailing had moved into IRC yachts
where he finished 2nd twice in the IRC Nationals as
helm, and won numerous IRC events.
The company decision to start Melges 24
production, got Paul back into keelboat mode, and along
with skiff sailors Simon Rosier and Richard and Kit
Stenhouse managed to finish 4th in their first Nationals
having had 1 ½ days practise. They managed the
same thing again a year later.
His greatest loss to date is that matters
have contrived every year to prevent him from winning
the Musto Performance Skiff Gold Cup, aside the fact
that he doesn’t seem to have a boat, or that he cannot
actually trapeze Paul sees these as minor problems,
and anyway who would take the photo’s, and he would
miss out on the enjoyment he gets from watching.
Paul’s boundless enthusiasm coupled with
a clear understanding of engineering has helped to make
the Musto Performance Skiff what it is today, part of
everyday life for Paul a 13 time Olympic medal winning
and multi class World Championship designer. Not bad
for a raving lunatic !
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