Sir Donald Gosling ?

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Sir Donald Gosling

With 400ft yachts being launched by the world's billionaires, Gosling's elegant Leander, at 245ft, is beginning to look a little small. Even so, it is Britain's most expensive charter yacht at £280,000 a week. Gosling, 75, who served in the Royal Navy, is passionate about all things nautical. He can afford his indulgence, having started National Car Parks in 1948 with partner Ronald Hobson (qv). He netted £290m when they sold its parent company, National Parking Corporation, 50 years later. Hefty dividends over the years and his holdings in a couple of property groups take him

A yacht owned by Gosling, 79, was used by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall for their recent Caribbean tour. The 79-year-old set up the National Parking Corporation with Ronald Hobson (qv), and they made £290m apiece when it was sold. They also netted £112m from their Metrose property operation. He is worth £450m after charitable donations to the Gosling Foundation.

In a profile of Sir Donald Gosling published on 10 July, we stated that National Car Parks bought Europarks for pounds 30m. We now understand that the figure was, in fact, less than pounds 4.5m. We have also been asked to point out that Sir Donald is not the chairman of NCP, but joint chairman.

VISAR Crew Receive Donation from Sir Donald Gosling Aboard His Yacht Leander

In January of 2008, a VISAR crew responded to a rescue call, internally referred to as a “shout” which was initiated by the mega yacht Leander.

The captain and crew of the Leander assisted VISAR by making contact with the person in distress and sending their nurse to aid the casualty.

Foundation, onboard. Sir Donald invited members of VISAR aboard to receive the pledged cheque, an extremely generous donation of $20,000.00

VISAR is proud to be celebrating its 20th Anniversary, how fitting to be given $20,000.00 by The Gosling Foundation.

As we move into the 21st Anniversary next year, VISAR’s President Phil Aspinall quipped “we will happily welcome $21,000.00 if anyone would like to keep our new tradition going!”

Otherwise to learn more about VISAR, please join us on a Monday evening at the Base for our weekly meeting. Join the team as a responder and/or a fund raiser. www.visar.org

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Names: Sir Donald Gosling and Ronald Hobson.

Ages: Sir Donald, 70 yrs. Ronald, 78 yrs.

'Foolish' Idea: Buying up wasteland for car parks.

How Idea was Launched: In 1948, Sir Donald Gosling and Ronald, formed the holding company, National Parking Corporation, for the National Car Parks chain.

Built from the humblest of beginnings - from buying wasteland and charging a fee in return for car parking spaces, to the huge multi-stories concrete National Car Parks present in most towns and cities.

NCP is now Britain's biggest car park company.

Earnings: The holding company, National Parking Corporation was sold in 1998 for £801million.

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It may not be old Britannia, but it will not cost the Earth

In an effort to show that he is cutting his carbon footprint, the Prince of Wales has chartered one of Britain’s biggest and most luxurious private yachts to undertake an 11-day tour of the Caribbean next month.

Accompanied by the Duchess of Cornwall, the Prince will visit Jamaica, Trinidad, St Lucia and Montserrat on board the Leander, a 245ft (75m) motor yacht with 25 crew owned by Sir Donald Gosling, the multimillionaire who founded National Car Parks with a business partner on a bomb site in 1948 and collected £290 million when the company was sold in 1998.

The interior is more chintzy than garish, with pretty patterned sofa and curtains, glass-fronted cabinets full of ornaments, and luxurious rugs that engulf the passengers’ feet.

Sales literature encouraging the super-rich to charter the vessel promises that cabins will be serviced every time that guests leave them, and Leander’s own tenders, standing by to take guests to the nearest beach, are equipped with everything from cold champagne to cold showers.

“Guests can be as demanding as they like,” the brochure promises.

Leander is usually one of the most expensive British-registered yachts to charter, at about £280,000 a week, depending on itinerary, but Royal sources indicated that Sir Donald, whom the Prince knows well, had always offered it for official business, and had agreed a generous cut-price deal with the Government.

Clarence House said yesterday that chartering Leander would be significantly cheaper than chartering an aircraft to fly the royal party around four islands, and would produce far lower carbon emissions.

The Prince and the Duchess will use normal scheduled flights to and from the Caribbean after being frightened off their plans to charter a private aircraft to attend an environmental awards ceremony in US last year.

Transport to far-flung dominions and remote foreign countries has been an occasional problem since the Royal Yacht Britannia was decommissioned a decade ago and turned into a floating museum in an Edinburgh dock. At 412ft she was getting on for twice the length of Leander, and her crew of more than 260 Royal Navy officers and ratings, known as “snotty yachties”, provided a far bigger complement than any other private yacht.

Leander is gradually losing out in the size stakes, and even Britannia is being dwarfed by vessels belonging to men of other nations who are much richer than the Queen.

With two helicopter landing pads, a swimming pool, private cinema and submarine, Roman Abramovich’s new plaything, the Eclipse, will be 550ft of unimaginable floating luxury, outdoing the 525ft floating pleasure palace owned by Sheikh Maktoum of Dubai. .... Sir Donald Gosling

The Prince Abdul Aziz, private yacht of the Saudi royal family, is already looking like a mere minnow at 482ft.

But Leander, inside a dark-blue hull that is almost the exact shade of the old royal yacht, offers facilities that Britannia never did, including a swimming pool, two onboard exercise bikes and a team of stewardesses willing to run candlelit baths 24 hours a day.

The Prince and the Duchess – or rather the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which tells them where to go – have recently become much engaged with the Commonwealth, an organisation neglected by British prime ministers more engaged with Europe. The couple visited the Commonwealth summit in Uganda in November and will continue the association on their forthcoming tour.

Climate change will be high on the agenda, with Caribbean islands especially vulnerable and in the forefront of hurricanes. Sustainable development in islands heavily dependent on tourism will be another of the Prince’s themes, as will youth opportunities on islands where drugs, and the export of them to Britain, are a major problem. Sir Donald Gosling

While he is in Jamaica the Prince will revisit Rosetown, a slum area of the capital, Kingston, which he last visited in 2000 and where one of his charities, the Foundation for the Built Environment, is backing a redevelopment scheme.

It will be less exciting than his last visit, when he visited Bob Marley’s birthplace and was photographed wearing a rasta wig back to front, to the everlasting distress of his aides.

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