Boat charter firm founder sells up after 32 years

A BOAT brokerage and charter business in Henley is under new ownership.

Gillian Nahum, who founded Henley Sales and Charter, decided to step away after 32 years.

She has sold the company, which has offices in Station Road and a boatyard in Beale Park, to Heather Dennett, the event secretary for the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships.

Ms Nahum, 67, decided to find new owners for the business because she didn’t have the energy required to keep it growing.

She said: “I had been looking for the right people for a while. It’s something that I have nurtured for so long, it’s like a child and you want it to live on and grow.

“I just recognised that I am not able to make it grow anymore and I got to the point where I have got to let it go and let somebody else take it on. It wouldn’t have been wise to hold on and doggedly carry on when you haven’t quite got the energy that you had before.”

Ms Nahum, who lives in St Andrew’s Road with her husband Steve Hoile, was “adamant” she wanted the business to be taken over by a woman because there “aren’t enough women in the marine sector”.

She said: “I think Heather will be a brilliant person to take over from me, she’s got quite a lot of experience with the Dunkirk Little Ships and she is really active within that association.

“The River Thames is an amazing place – it has such heritage and businesses like this one keep it going, keep people enthusiastic about it and get people involved in things like the Traditional Boat Festival, which is an event I’ve always absolutely loved as an exhibitor.”

Ms Nahum, who is originally from Manchester, first came to Henley in 1987 when her boss asked her to take his boat to Henley so he could use it when he visited for the royal regatta.

She said: “The boat is still in Henley now all these years later. We came through Hambleden Lock and it was the first day of the regatta when we arrived. I was looking around and I had never seen anything like it. There were all these boats and blokes dressed in their school blazer with a cap on. As a Mancunian, I was really able to appreciate it from an outsider’s perspective, I had never seen anything like it.”

Ms Nahum had joined the boating industry when she was a young mother with two small girls. She had been living in Geneva and worked as a linguist. She moved back to the UK to have her family and at a party she overheard a conversation about somebody starting their own boat business.

Having got their number and shown a willingness to learn sales and marketing she was taken on. Another company then saw her at a boat show and offered her a job and she appeared on Tomorrow’s World because she had got involved in electric boating.

After then getting involved in classic boats, which she thought were “absolutely beautiful” she started Henley Sales and Charter in 1992 and has enjoyed the variety of work, being able to travel due to exporting boats, and meeting creative people.

One of her proudest moments was being made a Freeman of the City of London and became a member of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights.

She said: “The Shipwrights are one of the oldest companies in London from the 1300s. It gives me access to wonderful dinners and beautiful places but it also enables me to help lots of young people, particularly young women, get into the industry.”

Through the business, she has been involved in several films, and provided boats for The Boys in the Boat, directed by Hollywood actor George Clooney, who lives in Sonning, which was filmed partially on the River Thames in Henley.

She said: “It was fun meeting George Clooney. We were involved in the film in a big way. We gathered a lot of period boats for the filming so it would have the right look.”

Ms Nahum rented six Thirties-style boats to the production company. These included two American Chris-Craft boats, two British river launches, a Swedish fast-commuter launch and gentlemen’s saloon launch.

She is staying on as a consultant while running her two other businesses, Pure Boating, a summer boat rental business, and Henley Houseboat Co, which rents out a houseboat in Henley.

Mrs Dennett, an interior designer, has been involved in wooden boats since she was a child. For the last 20 years she has run Dennett’s Boat Builders in Chertsey with her husband Stephen, who inherited the 65-year-old boat repair yard from his father, who founded it.

She said: “My parents bought a Dunkirk Little Ship when I was a baby. Even as a young child the story behind Dunkirk captured me and really shaped the rest of my life.

“She was in a really bad state of repair when I inherited her. I took her to Dennett’s and had her restored. The long and short of it is, he took all my money and asked me out on a date. That was about 20 years ago and now we have kids, dogs, and we run the business together.

“I’m an interior designer by trade, so I do a lot of the interior transformations of traditional boats, as I know boats so well. Being on the committee of the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships, wooden boats are in my blood.”

Mrs Dennett will be taking on the brokerage side of the business, while her husband will continue boatbuilding and repairs which will be expanded to also operate out of the boatyard at Beale Park.

She said: “I’ve known Gillian for a very long time through Stephen and I suppose there was just a synergy between what we already do and Gillian’s business. They complemented each other very well.

“When we were approached by Gillian it was very flattering because she has built up an amazing business and an amazing brand. The fact that she felt that it could be trusted to me is a great honour.

“We’re going to work side by side and she is going to mentor me because I’ve never done boat sales before. I’ve done lots of design work on them and restoration so this side is very new to me but, with Gillian’s help, hopefully I can keep her good name going.”

Mr and Mrs Dennett, who live in Chertsey, and have three children, Noah, 13, Elliot, 11, and Isaac, eight, hope to pass on their love of vintage crafts to the next generation.

Mrs Dennett said: “My husband is second generation and then we’ve got a third generation of boat builders that are coming up through the ranks. My middle son, Elliot, takes every opportunity when he’s not at school to be with his father, doing the techniques that he learned from his father.

“It’s great to see him coming through and having that natural talent and love for traditional boats. The fact that he’s got that from his parents is lovely and hopefully it will continue through him for the next generation.”