Tucked away in southwest England on the edge of the River Exe lies the town of Topsham. Richard Brown’s father, Sydney, a photographer for a local newspaper, settled here with his wife Dulcie after serving in WWII as an army photograph processor.
The River Exe opens into a wide estuary south of Topsham before entering the English Channel at Exmouth. Brown started sailing on this estuary as a teenager in a Jack Holt-designed Cadet, a two-person, 2.7m sailing dinghy, then in a 4.88m two-person Hornet. After finishing third in the 1963 Hornet Worlds, Brown sailed a single-handed, 3.78m Solo class to fifth place in the 1968 Solo World Championship.
Leaving school, Brown began a stress engineering apprenticeship with Saunders Roe, an aero and marine engineering company based on the Isle of Wight. After three years specialising in aircraft wing design, he joined the British Aircraft Corporation to work on the Concorde, then a few years later, at Hawker Siddeley, where he worked on the wing design
