In celebration of International Women’s Day, meet our very own Jo Wood who has been volunteering with us since 2019. If you are inspired and would like to sign up please complete a volunteer application form. We are looking for women with a full range of skills, including boat building but also communications, illustrating, recording, bookkeeping, marketing and so on…
Read on to find out about Jo’s boat building journey…
Jo’s passion for the sea and all things nautical was ignited when she was 30 on a learn to sail holiday in Greece. She was working at the time as an accountant for the BBC and joined their yacht club, allowing her to spend many hours cruising and racing in and around the Solent while developing her sailing skills – which were good enough to make her part of a winning race crew one year at Cowes Regatta.
At 34, Jo decided she needed a change and volunteered to work with a charity in Sudan for a year. This was the start of her international career which took her to many exciting places including Pakistan, Jordan and Lebanon and finished in Switzerland where she stayed for 4 years. There were a few sailing opportunities along the way, notably in Sudan – “We raced up and down the Nile in metal hull racing dinghies dating back to British Colonial times”, and also in Geneva, Switzerland where she got to take part in the Bol d’Or, the race to the end of Lake Geneva and back.
By 2016 it was time for another change and Jo chose to come home to England – but not quite directly. She handed in her notice with her Swiss employer and went adventuring – beginning with a transatlantic crossing on a square-rigged, engineless cargo ship from the Dominican Republic to the Netherlands. The adventure was made more thrilling with an unexpected stop in Canada to avoid a hurricane tracking across their intended route!
Jo decided to work less and do more fun things instead. Serious fun though because she started a year-long boat-building course in Lowestoft, with a focus on wooden boat building techniques. “I learnt to tell the difference from one end of a chisel to another and got my City & Guilds certificate in Boatbuilding. But I now also understood exactly how little I knew!”. So she looked around for opportunities develop her skills and somehow stumbled across the Sutton Hoo ship project. That has been Switzerland’s loss and the Sutton Hoo Ship’s Company gain because she has been an enthusiastic volunteer ever since. And what an asset she is.