Paul Adamson

“Becoming Chief Commercial Officer at British luxury sailing yacht builder Oyster Yachts in 2018 was an incredible opportunity and privilege that I never saw coming. There’s a lovely quote from the late, great Steve Jobs from when he addressed the Harvard student body that I’ve always loved. He said: ‘You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.’ When I look back now I can see how every little dot has connected to the next.

“It all started when I was 11 years old – I was lucky enough that my mum bought me a Topper sailing dinghy. I learnt to sail in my Topper on the River Dee in Chester, northwest UK, and got very good at boat handling as there wasn’t a lot of water! I used to bunk off school and go sailing – I’d say I’d missed the bus, then I’d strap my daggerboard, rudder and sail to my back and I’d cycle 10 miles to the sailing club and spend the day sailing up and down the river pretending I was sailing around the world. Then in my teens I did a lot of sailing down in North Wales on the Menai straits around Anglesey. I had a great time there.

“But my father passed away when I was 17. Naturally I was very upset, and I made a decision – I thought, ‘what am I going to do to sort out my head?’ and I knew. I was going to do what I love to do, which is to sail. I was bitten by the bug. It was around 1995, and I did a course to train as a dinghy, windsurf and kayak instructor at Plas Menai in North Wales, and because I’d done a lot of sailing I also had enough miles to sit for my Yachtmaster certificate when I was 18, and then my Yachtmaster Instructor qualification the following year. I taught yachting for a number of years, and basically the boats got bigger and bigger.

“I moved and completed my degree, Merchant Ship Operations, which formalised a lot of my yachting knowledge in terms of things like shipping law and naval architecture, then I got into offshore yacht racing, and then was taken on by Oyster as a junior commissioner. I was introduced to the owner of a new 56-foot Oyster and he asked me to join the yacht as his skipper – we did a shakedown sail around the UK then sailed across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and that’s where I met my wife (now the mother of my two kids). Then another dot arrived on the journey – I ended up skippering the first Oyster 885, called Lush, for former F1 team owner Eddie Jordan, and that’s how I met Richard Hadida, who bought Oyster Yachts in 2018 and gave me the opportunity to join his team as CCO.

“I’ve been around the world many times on these boats, and I love it – it’s been an amazing opportunity. I’m so passionate about what I do and so privileged to do it, and now I’m part of the senior management team – it’s incredible, although I’m lucky that all the dots connected for me to get to this point.

“For those who want to know what sailing and superyachts are, they are pure freedom and adventure. I can get on the yacht I’m standing on right now, fill her with fuel, put some food on board, and literally sail her anywhere in the world and have incredible experiences along the way. It’s all about the journey as well as the destination, it’s about adventure, having fun. And the beauty of the sport is that you can sail huge distances to far-flung places or you can have a dinghy and sail at your local club, have a laugh and get your kids involved – it’s such a welcoming sport. The social side is also incredible, whether it’s racing and enjoying the club with friends or sailing around the world in company, or even that special moment mid-ocean when a yacht appears from the mist and you pass, and you both wave. It’s such a lovely little ritual.

“It also connects you to the environment, to wildlife, to nature and to each other. We were sailing across the English Channel recently and I came up at 0200 for my watch – the stars were unbelievable, and I could see all the colours of the Milky Way. It gives you a very different perspective on life, and that’s one of the beauties of the sport that people don’t really understand until you get out there and actually experience it for yourself. And it’s not elitist: you can get out on the water for £500, and join a local club – that grassroots entry point exists worldwide.

“I proudly watched my six-year-old recently in an Optimist dinghy having his first sailing experience and he loved it. It’s great to be standing on the shore and seeing that, and you can take that all the way up to taking megayachts off around the world. Anyone can come into this sport, and anyone can get into this industry. It mirrors the ethos here at Oyster really, which is an extended family that encompasses owners, crew and everyone in Oyster too, who are a collection of passionate and extraordinary people doing extraordinary things by working as a team.”