Aquamarine Surveys
Aquamarine Surveys Ltd is the home of yacht surveyor Steffan Meyric Hughes MRINA, a marine surveyor accredited with RINA, YDSA and MSA, based near Brighton, Sussex in the south of England. I cover the coast from Poole, Dorset in the west, to Suffolk in the north east and further or internationally by agreement. I survey motor and sailing yachts up to around 45ft in GRP and wood, and larger boats as a team of two or three. Classics are a speciality.
My Story
I found my way into boats on the magazine Classic Boat, where I worked full-time for 20 years, the last six as editor. After visiting boatyards all over Britain and around the world, I’ve seen, written about or boat-tested more yachts in various states of build, dereliction or resurrection than I can remember. I’ve put my finger through the hull of a few, as they lie dying from rot. At the other end of the scale, I've edited the official book on the biggest yacht restoration the world has ever seen. Part of that 20-year journey was restoring and owning the classic wooden sailing yacht Billy Blue, a 1932 Hillyard Nine-Tonner, from wreck to ready; I've also built clinker dinghies at Stirling & Son. In 2009, I sailed a Swallow Boats Storm 15 around London and wrote a book about it; the same year, I took part in the Rolex Fastnet aboard the wooden pilot cutter yacht Morwenna. From serving on the concours judging board of the CIM in the Med to putting boats aground on the Essex mud, mine has been a long and continuing love affair with the waters of the world, the vessels that float on their surface, and the people who design, build, look after them and own them.
In 2024, after these two decades of experience, I undertook on the year-long, PGDip in Small Craft Surveying from Lloyds Maritime Academy, graduating in June 2025 with the highest available mark (distinction in surveying). For good measure, I trained all over again in April, this time with Aidan Tuckett and Martin Evans at their intensive, hands-on, full-time Marine Survey Training course at Fox’s Marina in Suffolk, again emerging with the highest possible pass (a merit).
These days, when I'm not surveying yachts, I act as contributing editor to Classic Boat, write articles in the yachting press, and volunteer at Dennetts, probably the world's leading restorers of inter-war wooden motor yachts, carrying out pre-restoration surveys, demolishing boats or doing any other dogsbody work that needs doing around the yard. In 2026, I edited a new title for Bloomsbury Publishing: The Wooden Boat Care and Repair Bible by the German boabtuilder Uwe Baykowski.