Like Annie, I first encountered Robin and Mandy at the 1979 Southampton boat show, when I saw their hand-written poster, inviting passers by to join the newly formed JRA, and diffidently approached. "Oh good", said Mandy, "you're the first!"
For the next twenty years, I lived within a few miles of them. I was always welcome when I wanted to talk junk, Robin opening the front door and ushering me into the crowded front room office. The large table was always piled high with drawings and photos of the latest projects, the bookshelves were full of junk-related books, boxes of JRA regalia lay around. Our conversations were always interrupted by long phone calls as Robin patiently helped JRA members and his clients. Indeed, it was often difficult to see a dividing line between his JRA activity and his Sunbird Marine business, but there's no doubt that this symbiosis helped both to survive and grow over the years 1979 - 2000.
Robin was always generous and helpful. When I needed offcuts of glassfibre tube for my junk rig and vane gear experiments, I was welcome to raid the racks of batten material around the side of the house. When I was fitting out Tystie, Robin kindly lent me his little caravan for months, so that I could live right beside the boatyard.
It's true that Robin struggled with computers. When personal computers first came in, and I set up the first little MSDOS database of JRA members so that address labels could be printed off and he and Mandy no longer had to address newsletters by hand, Robin kept his card index going, annotated with all that he knew about us, the JRA membership. From the millennium onwards, as more and more of us became familiar with email and websites, it became more and more clear that the JRA needed to adapt to changing circumstances. Yet though Robin remained firmly paper-based, his physical presence at home and at rallies remained as strong as ever. He continued to give unstinting help to many who would otherwise have struggled to understand the rig and build their own.
My condolences to Mandy and their two sons.