Viva Lewes Issue #153 June 2019

Chris Tipper
Selkie Kayaks
Chris Tipper works in the most amazing
space – for the last 22 years, he’s rented
this workshop from Newhaven Port and
Properties. It’s right at the end of Fort Road,
a stone’s throw from the sea, just before Newhaven
West Beach, and beyond Newhaven
Fort. A glorious spot (“yes,” Chris agrees;
“certainly, on a fine day!”).
And what does he do here? He builds kayaks.
Selkie Kayaks is the brand Chris set up a
couple of years ago. But he’s long been a
wooden-boat builder. He grew up locally,
and has always, he says, “messed around
in boats”. He remembers Newhaven port
from childhood, and the evocative sight of
“loads of old boats rotting in the mud. That,
I think,” he says, “marked the beginnings of
this whole aesthetic for me, around boats.”
Chris studied at the International Boatbuilding
Training College in Lowestoft. He
then went on to build an ocean pedal boat
– Moksha – for a project called Expedition
360. This was the first successful circumnavigation
of the globe using only human power,
explains the (expedition360.com) website,
and I was thrilled to encounter the unique
boat itself, for now at rest, under cover,
outside Chris’s studio.
He also, he says, owned a sailing boat for
twenty years, which he himself restored,
rebuilding the whole top half by hand. But
today his main focus is on building kayaks.
He shows us round his workshop where
there’s a lovely range.
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