Paul Antrobus (OB 1949-1959)

World beating yachtsman who would always "go that extra mile" for family, friends and community

Paul Gilbert Hugh Antrobus, an international yachtsman and major player in marketing and commercial sponsorship who gave his time to a host of community organisations, died on 7th July 2025, aged 83. The funeral took place at South West Middlesex Crematorium, Feltham, on July 28th. The service was conducted by the Rev. Judith Gibbons, his nephew’s wife.

Paul was born on 19th December 1941, in Berkhamsted, where his family had been evacuated from Leigh-on-Sea. Having moved to Shenfield, he grew up with three sisters. A pupil at Brentwood Prep, he passed the 11-plus to get into the senior school. He was a drummer in the CCF band and in the Scouts, with whom he enjoyed an unforgettable trip to Malta.

After school, he gained a diploma in marketing and joined London advertising agency Masius Wynne Williams. Starting in the post room, he eventually progressed to working on various accounts, including Babycham.

By 1966, he was working for Guinness in Park Royal as overseas advertising manager. He moved to White Horse Whisky, part of the Distillers Company, in 1969. Seven years later, he and his wife Angie moved to Brussels where Paul took an advertising and marketing job in the European office of Levi Strauss jeans. Later, he became product manager for Levi’s children’s range in Europe. He regarded
working for an American company in Europe as “fantastic experience”.

However, Paul had long wanted to be a pub landlord. As a sideline, he and some friends took over a local bar and turned it into The Victors, an English-style pub. It was very popular until it caught fire and the dream ended in flames.

After eight years with Levi’s, it was back to England and once again to White Horse Whisky. Paul identified the America’s Cup as a good sponsorship opportunity and the company launched the White Crusader campaign to challenge for the 1988 America’s Cup. The trials were raced out of Fremantle, with Paul in an organising role.

On the International golf front, he handled Johnnie Walker’s sponsorship of the Ryder Cup and the Johnnie Walker Golf World Championship - which took the family to Jamaica several times.

He stayed with the company as it transitioned from DCL to United Distillers after its purchase by Guinness in 1986. Sponsorship of the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh required Paul and his team to put together the necessary new branding at the very last minute. In 1997, the company became part of Diageo, shortly before Paul retired.

Throughout his life, sport in various forms was always very important. He was goalkeeper for the Brentwood Prep and Senior School 1st XIs and then for the Old Boys, taking part in the annual Easter Tours in Hastings and organising the New Year’s Eve parties at the Old Brentwoods clubhouse. In Belgium, he played for the Brussels-British football team and, back in Surrey, guested for a team of parents and teachers from a local boys’ school.

He played squash on Guinness courts at Park Royal and at Dolphin Square, the Castle Club in Brussels and elsewhere.

He took up skiing when George Kingston, his best friend from school, bought a flat in Belle Plagne. Family holidays ensued. Paul continued skiing with mates from Brentwood and the Crouch Yacht Club until a football leg injury forced him to give up.

Sailing was always top of the Antrobus agenda. He’d started as a youngster on the Essex coast. His parents owned a chalet at Point Clear, across the creek from Brightlingsea, where the family spent their post-war summer holidays. His father gave the seven-year-old his first single-sail dinghy. He moved up through dinghy and keelboat classes, co-owning a Brightlingsea One Design Sabrina with George Kingston. At Brentwood, there was supervision on a Barking lake by Messrs Shortland and Odell. He helped North win the House Sailing Cup.

Then he caught the big boat bug. After learning the ropes of offshore racing, he turned to the “hot-shot” events in the Solent and the Channel. He joined the crew of Phantom, selected in 1969 for the victorious British Admiral’s Cup team, competed for by three-boat teams from all over the world. Paul later sailed in similar team series, the Onion Patch in the USA and the Southern Cross Cup in Australia.

From the early 1970s, he raced in a succession of ‘Noryema’ boats. Noryema VIII was a modest stock boat bought for the 1972 season which hit the headlines, winning the Newport to Bermuda Race, finale of the Onion Patch series sailed out of Newport, Rhode Island. With Paul as sailing master, she had battled through hurricane-force winds to beat bigger, stronger rivals and break the long American dominance of the event.

In 1975, Noryema X proved a world beater. It was top scoring yacht in the Admiral’s Cup and winning British team, a member of our Southern Cross team in Australia and voted ‘Yacht of the Year,’ a fitting finale for Paul before moving to Brussels.

Back in England, he made guest appearances in races with friends and as a member of the Royal Thames Yacht Club, for whose events he and Angie sometimes acted as race officers. There were family cruising holidays in Greece, Croatia and Devon; trips across the Channel to France; racing in Burnham and Cowes Weeks; racing and cruising in the Caribbean; a cruise out of Zanzibar; a voyage to Iceland; Classic Malts cruises in Scotland; and crossing the Atlantic in the ARC. He was a long-term member of the Royal Ocean Racing Club.

Old Brentwoods, Foresters, Felstedians, Radleians and Lancing Old Boys were regularly encountered on the briny and ashore. According to Paul: “The friendships and social life built around this sport bore a striking similarity to the best days of Arthurian football.”

He was an active member and later commodore of the Weybridge Sailing Club. When numbers were dwindling, he used his marketing skills to save it. He was heavily committed to the Seven Seas Club, doing a stint on the committee and as President. Again, when membership was declining, he turned things around so the club could continue its mission to ‘promote and foster the comradeship of the sea’. He served as a director of the Baxter & Grimshawe Trust to help disadvantaged youngsters gain experience at sea. In Shepperton, he was for many years a director and treasurer of the Thames Meadow Residents Association.

Paul was a musician, playing the drums, piano and piano accordion and would have a go at the flute and recorder with his children. He was a writer, contributing to Yachts & Yachting magazine and writing a drinks column for All At Sea newspaper. He was the co-author of two books, Ocean Racing Around the World and Swatchway Magic, revisiting the coastline and watering holes of Essex and Suffolk. In the early 1970s, he was a founder member of the Society of International Nautical Scribes (SINS) formed to provide journos and photographers professional and social contacts when covering events overseas. SINS is still going strong.

Paul once reflected: “Daddy Brooks, my English teacher and North housemaster would have been amazed.”

In 1966, while racing at Cowes Week, he met Yacht & Yachting journalist Angela (Angie) Saunders. They were married the following year. Twin daughters Lucy and Claire and son Charlie were all born in Brussels.

In her eulogy, Angie Antrobus highlighted Paul’s unfailing consideration for others. “Keenly aware of the dangers of the sea he had written a letter to me in July 1970, prior to a race, only to be opened after his death. He said, ‘If my number has come up, there is nothing you can do to change it so please don’t be too sad for too long.’

“The T-shirt from the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games bore the legend ‘Making friends throughout the world’. That’s just what Paul did, professionally through his job, through international yacht racing and during the time we lived in Brussels. “He would always go that extra mile for family, friends, colleagues, the firms he worked for, the boats he sailed on and the clubs to which he belonged.“

“Life had nor been easy for him in the last few years. Shortly before he died, I asked him if he had a message for all the people he knew. He replied: ‘Thanks for a good game!’ He wasn’t just thinking about sports but about everyone he had met during an extraordinarily diverse life.”

Paul Antrobus is survived by his wife, son and daughters and three grandchildren.