Obituary – Graham Arthur Wyeth

We heard yesterday the sad news that Graham Wyeth of the Gosport club passed away on Tuesday due to complications with his kidney dialysis treatment.

Graham started in our sport in the late 1950’s with his friend Chris Edmonson at the Southampton Club before later moving to Gosport. Over his many years in the sport he has owned & raced a large variety of boats, in all classes both F/s & Radio, but his main love was the F/S (vane) A class. He quietly helped the Gosport club in many ways from removing weed from the lake, supplying carpet & paint for the old clubhouse supplied by Cunard from the QE2! donating trophies to the club and many raffle prizes to help with A week, or just gently “oiling the wheels” to keep the club going.

In addition to his model yacht racing Graham, with his Dad Ron & younger brother Clive, built their family business Itchen Marine into the large water front towage, marina, fuel and haul out facility, that it is today, serving the commercial & leisure marine industry of Southampton. It was through this business that Graham gave the vane A fleet sailors some memorable night in the mid1990’s. A bus would collect us from Gosport town centre or the Kingfisher Caravan Park Stokes Bay, and transport us all to the Itchen Marine yard where we would board one of Graham’s tugs or a police launch. We then sailed out of the Itchen River into Southampton Water to the Solent and then into the Hamble river to Hamble town quay, where we disembarked to spend a couple of hours in Hamble village for beers & dinner. After this we sailed back in the moonlight and arrived back to Gosport about midnight after a very unique night. Also Graham had a connection with the “SS Shieldhall” the last steam powered prop driven ship surviving and still sailing. He kindly organised for us to have the A Class Championship prizegiving dinner on this ship whilst sailing across the Solent to Cowes to watch the Cowes week firework display. A very special night indeed.

Graham was married to Maureen and they had 2 children Shaun and Mandy. Shaun inherited his Dad’s love of sailing and has passed this onto his 3 sons. We are delighted to welcome 4 Wyeth entries to most F/S Championships and they also dabble in some R/C classes.

Graham can be proud of the family, business, and model yachting legacy he leaves behind.

Derek Priestley
MYA President