Boat builder sets up woodwork shop

Creative base:  Fine furniture maker, shipwright and boat builder Nigel Whitton in his new workshop in Vickerman St.

By KAREN GOODGER / NELSON MAIL                                                                     Photo: COLIN SMITH

A boat builder who has sailed the world working for the rich and famous is establishing a fine woodworking business near Port Nelson.

Nigel Whitton has taken on the lease of a workshop in Vickerman St to use as a base for his business, NW Designs.

He intends making space available to ther graduates of Nelson's Centre for Fine Woodworking who, he says, often don't have the resources to establish their own facilities.

"I thought if I can set up a community group workshop then I can get other people to come in who can't afford the outlay and work in here in a group environment.  Working by yourself can get a bit lonely."

Mr Whitton spend a year studying at the Centre for Fine Woodworking in 2007, returning to New Zealand from Palm Beach, Florida, where he and wife Alison managed the estate of Netscape founder Jim Clark.

Before that he had qualified as a boat builder in Australia and worked in the super-yacht industry, in which he gained qualifications and experience in deck operations and later in marine engineering.

Since last being in Nelson, Mr Whitton has worked as the interior foreman for a refit of Sir Richard Branson's super-yacht and had a one-year contract on a 68-metre private motor yacht.  He said he and his wofe had decided to start a family and "that happened quicker that we thought".

"That sealed our decision to come and set ourselves up here again."

While he was overseas, a Marlborough winery commissioned Mr Whitton to make a wooden bench and this is the first piece he's working on in his new business. 

He said he had considered establishing a workshop and gallery in Nelson but the rents were "astronomical".

"There's something quite endearing about coming to a workshop and seeing a piece that's just come out of it.

"I just love the process of starting with a raw slab of timber and, through vision and skill, turning it into a unique and loved piece of furniture that a client can be proud to display."

It was just coincidence he had ended up on the port area, although he's keen to do work that draws on his boatbuilding background.