The History of the Contessa 32

Written  by Fiona Rogers for the 25th anniversary magazine and updated in 2008

It was at the London Boat show in 1971 that the Contessa 32 made her first public appearance. Two hulls had been moulded during the autumn of 1970: the Boat Show boat, Contessa Catherine, belonging to David Sadler, and Red Herring, which Jeremy Rogers and his brother, Jonathan, had fitted out at home over that winter.

Another hull, the first Infidel, was moulded for Peter Stone, but due to lack of factory space in Lymington it had to be fitted out in Chichester. Both Red Herring and Contessa Catherine were launched and sailing by the end of March, and between them they cleaned up most of the Solent and Poole trophies that season: Red Herring was overall winner of her class in Cowes Week 1971 and her racing career went on from there. What is more, nearly forty years later, Contessa Catherine is still as competitive as ever.

Production began at the rate of one 32 per month, along with the 26s, in the newly constructed Waterloo Road yard in Lymington (now the premises of Green Marine Ltd), and at the following London Boat Show the Contessa 32 was given the then much coveted Boat of the Show award. Such was her popularity that production could not keep up with demand, and very soon there was a two-year waiting list for delivery. New premises were built to cope, and after the first ten years of production there were nearly five hundred Contessa 32s on the water all over the world, and there was a flourishing class association as well.

Those are the barest details of the first decade of this wonderfully successful boat, but how and why did she ever come about in the first place? Well, quite simply she was to be the big sister of the Contessa 26, which Jeremy had begun building in GRP in 1965/6. So many customers had asked him when he was going to produce a bigger version that by the Boat Show of 1970 he and David Sadler were actively researching a new design.

They looked at everything on the market at the time, and bearing in mind the change in the racing rules from the old RORC to the new IOR system, they chose to play safe and design a sea-kindly, fast hull with fin and skeg - quite a novel idea in those days! Cruising comfort was a high priority, and both families spent long evenings pretending that variously arranged bits of furniture were cockpit seats or cabin bunks; finally a happy compromise was reached, and all agreed that we could just about tolerate the leg lengths between the seats, the depth of the cockpit and the height of the coamings on long, cold and wet night passages. Subsequent sailing trips of that nature have sometimes caused me to doubt the value of those sessions, but nevertheless there can have been few other boats at that time whose owners' personal comfort at sea was so meticulously worked out at the design stage.

Jeremy's training had been in wooden boat construction with Jack Chippendale in Fareham. He had built wooden Folkboats as well as the racing dinghies, which he sailed in himself. So in 1961, and at the tender age of twenty-three, he set up his own business, it seemed logical to build a wooden Folkboat. Undeterred by the small size of his garage in Lillington House, New Street, Lymington, he built Dysca, a traditionally carvel-planked Folkboat, for which much of the timber used came from the New Forest. Her owner, Dr David Carnegie, a remarkably trusting customer, returned for three more boats over the subsequent years, and until only a few years before his death in his late eighties he was still the proud owner of his Contessa 32, Dysca IV.

Soon afterwards, and not a little because Dysca had only just managed to squeeze through the garage doors, new factory premises were found at the bottom of East Hill (now Leon Engineering) in Lymington, and together with literally hundreds of dinghies he built seventeen more Folkboats there, but cold moulded in wood rather than carvel planked. One of these was Contessa of Parkstone, built for a keen sailor from Poole, who just happened to be called David Sadler.

David had had an astonishingly successful sailing season with Contessa of Parkstone, which had a very efficient mast-head rig based on Chippy Davey’s set-up for his famous Folkboat, Fenya. So when in 1965/6 Jeremy decided to move into GRP production - quite revolutionary in those days - he asked David if he could use his rig design. The hull was modified somewhat, and the name Contessa (after David's wife, Tessa) was adopted for the class. Yes, there was indeed a Contessa Association before the Contessa 32 ever existed! Then four years later came the design for the bigger boat; this involved the proverbial shoe-string and a lot of good will from many different people.

Sales of Contessas of different sizes and designers flourished for a decade, and the company became a market leader worldwide. However the economic downturn of the early 1980s caused a slump in the boat-building market, and the long and the short of it was that the yard went into receivership, the Contessa 32 moulds were eventually sold elsewhere, and Jeremy had to start in business again from scratch.

After another ten years Jeremy managed to purchase the moulds back and set up a limited production of this now classic yacht. The first of the new Jeremy Rogers Contessa 32s, Wild Call, was launched in February 1996. Since then a steady flow of Contessa 32s have been built and old ones refurbished at the yard, and the yachting press regularly features articles about them. The refit of Jeremy’s own Gigi has received much press interest.

These lovely boats continue to make headlines as they prove themselves again and again in blue water voyages, more often than not short-handed. However the Contessa 32 Class Association organizes a regular racing programme, notably in the Solent, and the Class has its own start in Cowes Week. So it could certainly be said that the boat has something to offer everyone who loves sailing.

No one in the early days ever expected the Contessa 32 to be such a perennial success. She is a beautiful boat, built to last, but as much as anything else she owes her longevity to loyal and enthusiastic owners and the support of the Class Association.