Chris Overton was born in Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire during 1951 and was educated at a comprehensive school in Harlow, Essex. During this time he built his first boat, a twenty-one-foot-long canoe, in his back garden and sailed her on the nearby River Stort. He studied boat building at Colchester in Essex then Naval Architecture and Shipbuilding at Chatham Dockyard College (H.M.S Pembroke) also Poplar Merchant Navy College, East London. Recently he was an undergraduate mature student at Southampton Solent University where he obtained A Bachelor of Science Degree and The University of Greenwich as a postgraduate. He has worked for various yacht builders and ship owners. He is widowed with three grown up children, lives alone in Essex and runs his own business as a Naval Architect/Surveyor Boat Safety Inspector (inland waterways) and Yacht Delivery Skipper.