Sven Skatun shares with us:

My dear friend Iain Oughtred sailed out on his final journey three weeks ago. Many people in and around Findhorn would have known and loved him as well.

There was an obituary for him in the West Highland Free Press, and I found it so lovely and telling that I like to share it here.

The 22nd of February saw the death in Broadford Hospital of Iain Oughtred, the 84-year-old designer of the internationally famous community rowing boat the St Ayles skiff. Of the 107 boats he designed, the St Ayles was easily the most famed and has now been built over 400 times for community rowing teams around the world. Shortly after its design, the ever self-effacing Iain – who lived in Skye for over 20 years – had said that if only 12 of his plans were sold he would be happy, and he was amazed to hear of the launching of the 400th boat, only around 16 years after its design.

Born and raised in Sydney, Australia to a large family, Oughtred was seen as being the godfather of the new fashion of community rowing skiffs which has seen regattas springing up all over the Highlands and Islands. The skiffs come in easily built kits costing around £4,000 and are lightweight enough to be enjoyed by both the very young and the very old. At some regattas there are more women rowers than men.

The skiffs are constructed from pre-cut plywood sheets clamped together with super strong resins and built on lines taken from a Fair Isle fishing boat. The finished boat takes four oars and a cox and can easily be rowed at considerable speed, even by novices.

It is said that Oughtred never designed an ugly boat and by his own admission he was something of a taciturn philosopher who was obsessed with his work, often at the expense of his domestic life.

Many attribute the skiff’s success to the enthusiasm built up initially through community fundraising, which followed by witnessing the building which then generates an interest in establishing a village team. Iain used to say that if a skiff was simply presented ready built to a community the chances of a good team quickly evolving were far slighter.

The St Ayles design first came off his drawing board when in 2008 the fishery museum at Anstruther commissioned Iain to design a community rowing skiff to celebrate the Fife miners’ long tradition of inter village skiff racing.

Few expected more than a few dozen kits to be bought. However, within two feverish years there were already enough for the first regattas and soon there were skiffs being built all over the world, quickly leading to world championships attended by thousands.

Iain, who I counted as a friend, admitted that he had spent much of his life living in small damp cottages usually working huddled almost over a wood burning stove intermittently dropping the odd vegetable into a stew, with eyes, and indeed heart, only for the task in hand. Working in such terrible conditions, often for 12-hour spells, he produced designs for most of the 107 boat designs that have since given joy to thousands.

Twenty odd years ago he moved to Skye and was able to buy, for around £25,000, a tiny cottage which changed his life. It was from there that he designed the skiff that made him world renowned, and he became much happier – possibly through being a bit warmer and having a more varied diet.

I remember once visiting him in one of the colder houses and thinking he wanted to hug me and then realising that the poor man was just so cold he had had to put on several jerseys leading to his arms sticking out like a penguin.

Once we had laughed a while he went straight back to his drawing board. He was really more of an artist than a technician and cared little for warmth, smart clothing or even his status as a living legend. All that really mattered to him was his art and finding the happiness that comes from doing what you do best.

Painfully shy as a child, he was bright but never did well at school, and many of his earlier jobs were of a menial nature that didn’t tap into considerable talents and extraordinary ability to focus on things that fascinated him, and pay little attention to things that didn’t. In latter years he wondered if he had once been slightly autistic.

As a youngster he took comfort from designing and building model aeroplanes and had a particular fascination with aerodynamics and the glues that held them together. Another breakthrough came for him when he became an Australian dinghy champion, but it was said of him that he often seemed more interested in fulfilling the yacht’s design potential than beating the other contestants, and he would sometimes race home after winning the event to sketch possible improvements to the boat rather than go to celebrate.

In the 1960s he fulfilled a lifetime’s dream of moving to Britain (his mother’s family came from Orkney and he never felt at home in Australia) and with little money and a strong commitment to ecologically responsible living he became something of a long-haired bearded hippy, even at one stage living in a squat.

A number of projects in locations as widespread as the east coast of England to the Findhorn community saw him build and design boats with little regard to money, or indeed to finding a wife, something he was later to regret. I remember asking him to design a sailing rig for my rowing dinghy and asking what his fee would be, and he responded that as he had nothing in the larder for dinner and had seen a fresh salmon in my car that that would easily suffice.

Perhaps one of the things we should take from Iain’s life is how much he gained from having somewhere warm and affordable to call home. He said one of the great joys of owning a house was in knowing that no landlord could throw him out. Lord forgive them, even if they are Lords. He often deserved better. As do so many.

Farewell Iain. You were ever more an artist than a technician, and your work has enriched many of us spiritually and at your cost. Shortly before he died, Iain, who was sometimes lonely, told me that although he was proud of the boats he had designed he was even prouder of the communities he had helped bring together.

As he lay dying overlooking a gale swept Hebridean bay a plan was launched for a final regatta of the skiffies he had designed to bounce and bob beneath his window as he set off on his last journey, but the coarse weather prevented their launching.

Some suggested that had they launched that day into the heavily pitching waves the closely watching Iain would only have been tackled by obsessive thoughts of how he could widen the ogin troubled skiffs to make them sit more comfortably like ducks at their ease. And that’s an Oughtred line.

Farewell Iain, we will miss you. He is survived by loving family members, a number of wistful women, and a good son. A stone to his cairn.

Maxwell Macleod