Paul Gelder

1947-2019

Paul Gelder, sailor, author and former editor of Yachting Monthly, died in February. He had been suffering from cancer.

Paul had a background in regional newspapers and had been editor of the West Sussex Gazette before joining Yachting Monthly in 1990. He later served as editor for a decade between 2002 and 2012.

A great writer with perfect pitch and a memorable turn of phrase, Paul brought to life many sailing accounts and he also showed his appetite for adventure.

He joined Sir Robin Knox-johnston to sail Suhaili back from the Azores to the UK, and the feature he wrote about this, titled ‘The Sea God and the Scribe’, was described by then editor Andrew Bray as one of the best sailing stories he’d ever published.

In 1992 he joined the crew of Interspray for the first leg of the first ever BT Global Challenge, racing from Portsmouth to Buenos Aires. That was typical of his enthusiasm for adventure and it led later to a book about the crew’s race round the world.

He loved solo round the world races, and was deeply affected by the loss of a friend, Harry Mitchell, in the Southern Ocean during the 1995 BOC Challenge. Mitchell had been sailing his 40ft yacht Henry Hornblower when he disappeared. Paul went on to write a book about the BOC Challenge, The Loneliest Race.

In 2002, he became editor of Yachting Monthly and put his mark on the magazine. He devised and set up the Crash Test series, taking a 40ft yacht and subjecting it to a series of catastrophes to illustrate how to cope with flooding, dismasting, fire and sinking. The boat was spectacularly blown up in the Solent in a finale disaster.

But Paul’s proudest achievement, and one for which he will be lastingly known, was in helping restore Sir Francis Chichester’s Gipsy Moth IV, lobbying to get her released from concrete dry dock in London and go sailing again. Together with David Green of the UKSA, he helped advance the campaign and the yacht set out on her second circumnavigation in 2005, a voyage scheduled to coincide with Yachting Monthly’s centenary in 2006.

As well as editing and sailing with the magazine, Paul spent some time rebuilding and renovating his much modified Telstar trimaran Phoenix – so called because she’d been damaged in the 1987 storms and re-built by his friend David Kay – and then sailing her around Chichester Harbour and the Solent, where they were a familiar sight.

He leaves his wife, Anne, and daughter, Laura.