Our People

Board of Trustees

Michael Loftus - Chair of Trustees

Honorary President

Mark McNeill - Chair of Classic Boat Museum, Cowes

Mark McNeill - Honorary President

Volunteer Group

Jill Bredon

I started sailing at the age of 9 in dinghies.
After a stint of campaigning an olympic 470 dinghy in early 1970's and getting married to Nick in 1976, went into offshore racing - mostly RORC.
Eventually sailing out of Shepherds wharf marina, I met up with Maurice Wilmot, founder of the Classic Boat Museum.
The inevitable happened. We moved from the midlands to the island. I became a trustee (now retired) and got hooked into museum life.
Since retirement as an Inspector of HMRC (34 years) I wanted something to do. The main thing I missed about work was the people. The museum easily filled that void.
I now have lots of thing to do, and have great fun together with other volunteers.

Rosemary Joy - Museum Historian

I came to the Museum via the bar at the Island Sailing Club - urged by friends who rightly said it would be fun for me, a ‘Jill-of-all-trades’, with years in Cowes, decades of race officering, lecturing on J-Class racing in the 1930s, a canal boat in France and later Hon. Sec. of the newly formed Association of Yachting Historians. This rather varied background was ideally suited in the early days of the museum's growth, welcoming as we did loans and donations of all sorts and sizes, the rare and the mundane, the valuable and the junk, and vast stacks of books, magazines and film. Now we are a serious grown-up museum, and it’s still fun.