Along with 4 other industry professionals Derek (as the Chairperson) set up the ‘Superyacht Charities Foundation’ (SYC) as a charity in the UK.
After a few individually successful events the Superyacht Charity ‘Black Tie’ Ball was first created in 2015 attended by 360 industry professionals, this grew to 522 by 2018. To date the 4 events have raised almost £265,000 with charities like ‘Sail4Cancer’, ‘Antibes Lifeboat’, ‘Rona Trust’ and ‘Turn2Starboard’ all receiving a large charitable donation from the SYC.
Derek has been in the yachting industry since 1988 first as crew, captain, engineer and more recently as owners’ representative for several new build projects in Italy, Germany and Holland. At the same time as establishing a charitable organisation and seeing it grow year by year, he has worked on a number of newbuild projects as part of larger collaboration projects and in the guise of his own company Yacht Consultancy, most recently bringing a 106m mega sailing yacht to fruition bristling with ‘eco-premium’ innovations. This is a testament to his dedication to combining industry professionalism with owner satisfaction which in turn complements the role of SYC to truly show the charitable nature of the seafarer.
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