Rustler

Rustler Yachts builds heavy ocean cruisers in Penryn, Cornwall, from moulds that first tasted resin in 1980. The yard began as Orion Marine, founded when Ralph Hogg bought the tooling for a late-1970s Holman & Pye design; it became Rustler Yachts in 1984, absorbed Rival Bowman in 2002, and moved to purpose-built waterside premises in 2005. The moulds never changed. Neither, in essence, did the boat.

That boat is the Rustler 36: roughly 125 hulls in 45 years of continuous production, and the type a third of the 2018 Golden Globe fleet chose for a non-stop solo circumnavigation. The first three finishers all sailed one. The yard now builds larger designs for, in its own words, Range Rover drivers in their fifties, but the 36 remains in the catalogue: a late-1970s hull you can still order new, built by hand, one at a time.