I’ve visited Lyme Regis many times as a keen amateur fossil hunter; I have ammonites, belemnites, teeth and more collected from the rocky beachfront, writes Kaia Bint-Savage.
I display them at home, each one neatly labelled. I like having these pieces of history in my house.
As I walk along the waterfront, I imagine Mary Anning and her little dog doing the same as me, scanning the stones, pebbles and muddy cliffside for a hint of a puzzle piece of a dinosaur, making me appreciate the small things in life that connect humanity throughout the centuries.
I feel the same connection with humanity through boats.
There’s something about being at sea that reminds you how long we’ve been doing this: sailing, surviving, exploring. And in a handmade wooden boat, you’re part of that same story, whether it’s 1725 or 2025.
The sea doesn’t just bring people together across continents; it connects us to our ancestors, too.
It’s an incredible skill to build a boat, and in traditional boatbuilding, a lot of the core techniques are the same ones craftspeople have used for hundreds of years.
Now and again, when you sit on the beach at Lyme Regis, you may see one of these beautiful wooden vessels, sunlight glinting off the varnished timber, dancing gracefully in between motorboats and seagulls.
It’s no wonder – just a stroll down the beach and through the car park, and you arrive at the Boat Building Academy.
When I visited last month, I was heading to the Academy for a specific reason: I had the privilege of filming with and interviewing Belinda Joslin, Founder of Women in Boatbuilding.
Belinda is building something bigger than a boat: an active community of support, mentorship and opportunity for women entering the marine industry.
I’ve witnessed constant sexism in the world of sailing and boats over the last decade.
It can be outwardly overt, with crews openly still not wanting a female sailor onboard, to snide and insidious, with comments from ‘old-school’ sailors on Facebook laden thick with ‘old-school’ values.
So, when I heard about Women in Boatbuilding, I knew I wanted to meet Belinda in person.
It’s no secret that trades like boatbuilding are still heavily male-dominated, and that can be intimidating if you’re just starting in the industry. Belinda understands that.
She can share many stories of boatbuilders she’s spoken to who’ve been the only woman in a workshop, or who’ve had to prove themselves twice over.
That’s exactly why Women in Boatbuilding exists: not just to inspire the next generation, but to retain them and remind them that they belong.
I watched Belinda talking to the students at the academy – many of whom have been helped by Women In Boatbuilding’s efforts to get more women into the industry.
I was struck by her genuine excitement to learn about what each student was creating.
Even from the other side of the room, she’d spot a piece of work that looked interesting and point it out to me, explaining what that specific part would be used for.
She asked the students all the right questions to get their eyes to light up as they described their current projects.
As their conversations developed, it became clear to me how much it meant to them to have the support of organisations like Women in Boatbuilding, and people like Belinda cheering them on behind the scenes, and right there in the room.
And right there in the room she is! I wasn’t the only visitor at the academy that Friday; MP Edward Morello was visiting, too.
And after speaking with Belinda, just weeks later at Westminster, he raised the debate around diversity in boatyards, and about the importance of
investing in traditional boatbuilding skills.
It’s this enthusiasm and passion that drives change, and gets people to sit up and listen. It’s this engagement and support that gets people interested in boatbuilding, and represents the underrepresented.
For the first time ever, the academy has more women than men enrolled in this year’s cohort.
And like the fossils in my collection, it’s those small, solid things – encouragement, visibility, community – that stand the test of time.