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 am affiliated to RINA (Royal Institute of Naval Architects), MSA (Marine Surveyors Institution) and YDSA (Yacht Designers and Surveyors Institution). My reports are written in the plainest English possible.
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. These days, I spend a day a week working at Dennetts on the upper Thames, leading restorers of inter-war motor cruisers. 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. These days, I do technical articles and boatyard visits for Classic Boat and the occasional book-editing job; currently a new 'bible' for wooden yacht owners soon to be published in English by Bloomsbury.
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).
Throughout this time, as well as working at Dennetts (this continues indefinitely), I have been lucky enough to shadow surveyors like Rob Bingham and Aidan Tuckett on dozens of diverse surveys, from fishing boat hull ultrasounds and derrick inspections, to 1980s planing cabin cruisers. I also carry out condition reports on vessels arriving at Dennetts for rebuild.