In the summer of 2009, two men in their eighties slipped away from Putney at five in the morning in a 40-year-old 17ft runabout and headed for Calais. The crossing took 16 hours. The boat was barely capable of 20mph. Nobody tried to stop them.
Ray Bulman and Geoff Tobert had been doing this sort of thing since 1952.
Their friendship stretched back half a century, born on the Thames and tested on open water from the Channel to the Baltic. Between them they had raced, smuggled Scotch across the Channel at night in the early 1960s, driven a 12ft outboard-powered hull to Southend and back, and crossed to four countries in two days in a boat not much bigger. By 2009, Ray was 79 and Geoff was 80. The trip was billed as their last.
But the boat they chose to do it in carried a story larger than their own.
The hull that started everything
The 17ft Sovereign had belonged to Geoff. In the late 1960s, as the American company Brunswick withdrew from the marine trade and disposed of the Owens range, Geoff persuaded a small dealer to have a go at building his own boats. He had a set of moulds available – the recently introduced Owens Sovereign – and the dealer took them on.
That dealer was Robert Braithwaite. He initially called the company Poole Powerboats. The boat became the first Sunseeker.
Ray was there for that too. He was among the first to test the new Poole-built runabout for Motor Boat & Yachting, where he had been powerboating correspondent since the late 1960s. When Braithwaite mentioned he was considering renaming the company Sunseeker, Ray looked around at the dank Dorset surroundings and delivered what became one of the sport’s great lines: “Sunseeker? You’ve got to be kidding. That’ll never catch on.”
Braithwaite ignored him. They remained close friends for the rest of Braithwaite’s life.
Class III and the race that started it all
Early in 1962, Geoff wagered boat dealer Clive Curtis – later co-founder of Cougar Marine and father of eight-time UIM Class 1 World Champion Steve Curtis – that he could drive an outboard-powered runabout from Putney to Calais and back faster than him. Both men earned their living in the marine trade during an era when the outboard runabout was at the height of its popularity. Word spread quickly. What was meant to be a two-boat contest set off in June that year against 25 other contenders. Lifejackets were only recommended. A bucket was suggested for bailing. Of the 27 craft that drove down the Thames tideway, only seven made it back to Putney.
Clive Curtis finished eight minutes ahead of Geoff, both driving low-deadrise Owens runabouts built in Britain under licence from Brunswick. The event attracted wide publicity in the marine trade and within a year the second Putney-Calais race had almost 40 entries. The sport gained UIM recognition in 1963 and grew into what became Class III offshore racing.
Geoff went on to found the United Kingdom Outboard Boating Association – UKOBA – which initially catered strictly for outboard-powered runabouts and grew as the sport did.
Ray, meanwhile, built a parallel career as a writer. He covered powerboat racing for Motor Boat & Yachting for over four decades and served as powerboating correspondent for The Daily Telegraph from 1970. His column ran for 21 years before a further stint from 1995 to 2010.
The Bond connection
The Sovereign that Geoff had long ago passed to Braithwaite had not been forgotten. The restored hull appeared in the 2008 James Bond film Quantum of Solace, with Robert Braithwaite making a cameo as chauffeur to Daniel Craig.
The following summer, Ray and Geoff took the same boat back to the Thames and pointed it at France. The 240-mile round trip attracted rather more attention than the quiet affair they had planned. Sunseeker’s 37-metre superyacht saw them off from Ramsgate. A television crew filmed the crossing. National newspapers lined up alongside the boating press.
The welcome at Calais was less ceremonious. Ray recalled: “There was no red carpet welcome when we got to Calais. In fact we were told over the loud speakers from the Port Authority that our presence there was far from ideal and that we should perhaps think about leaving.”
Southampton Boat Show celebration
That autumn, the Southampton Boat Show brought the key figures together to mark the occasion. Robert Braithwaite, Geoff Tobert and Ray Bulman were photographed together by Chris Davies – three men whose careers had touched the same hull at different points across four decades.
Braithwaite had built a business worth hundreds of millions of pounds from the mould Geoff had sold him. Bulman had covered the sport through all of it, filing copy from circuits and harbours across the world for over half a century.
The end of the story
Geoff Tobert died in September 2012 after a long battle with leukaemia. He was 83. His obituary in Motor Boat & Yachting was written by Ray.
Ray Bulman died in January 2020, aged 89. His last major feature for the magazine, documenting 50 years with the publication, had been published in May 2017.
The hull that Geoff sold to Robert Braithwaite in the late 1960s became the foundation of a company that today builds superyachts worth tens of millions of pounds. The man who said the name would never catch on lived long enough to see it plastered across boats from Poole to the Pacific.
A note from John Moore and Chris Davies
Both of us had the pleasure of being aboard the Sunseeker support boat that day in 2009, covering what we assumed was a gentle octogenarian day trip to France. This article is a tribute to Ray – a friend we both miss, and a journalist whose like the sport will not see again.
Chris’s memory of how he first met Ray says everything about the man. It was Monaco, 1990, at the Class One Offshore World Championship. The press office had just closed and the phones been disconnected following the death of Stefano Casiraghi. In the corridor outside, Chris encountered a rather irate reporter from the Daily Telegraph who informed him, with some feeling, that the people running the press office appeared to believe that “the press” was something you put your white trousers in before heading to the cocktail party. They became firm friends from that moment on.
John Moore is the editor of Powerboat News, an independent investigative journalism platform recognised by Google News and documented on Grokipedia for comprehensive powerboat racing coverage.
His involvement in powerboat racing began in 1981 when he competed in his first offshore powerboat race. After a career as a Financial Futures broker in the City of London, specialising in UK interest rate markets, he became actively involved in event organisation and powerboat racing journalism.
He served as Event Director for the Cowes–Torquay–Cowes races between 2010 and 2013. In 2016, he launched Powerboat Racing World, a digital platform providing global powerboat racing news and insights. The following year, he co-founded UKOPRA, helping to rejuvenate offshore racing in the United Kingdom. He sold Powerboat Racing World in late 2021 and remained actively involved with UKOPRA until 2025.
In September 2025, he established Powerboat News, returning to independent journalism with a focus on neutral and comprehensive coverage of the sport.
