My former wife, Anne Edmonds, who has died aged 67 of cancer, was a small-business director who helped to make our joint software company a success. After starting her career in publishing, she changed tack and directed her interests to maritime life based in south Devon.
Anne was born in Newmarket, Suffolk, to Jean (nee Backhouse) and Colonel Nicol Gray. Her father served in the Royal Marines in Normandy in the second world war and as a police chief in Palestine and in Malaysia.
She attended Mayfield girls’ boarding school, East Sussex, and studied French and German literature at Newnham College, Cambridge. After graduating in the mid 1970s, she joined the publishers Hamish Hamilton as an editor. Among the titles she edited was Testimony, the memoirs of Shostakovich. She also co-translated The Tunnel by André Lacaze, his harrowing account of Mauthausen concentration camp.
Anne was not happy in the publishing world and in her 20s felt she needed a change. In 1981 she joined the Island Cruising Club in Salcombe, Devon, which ran six large yachts offering sailing holidays in the Channel and further afield. It offered a fantastic opportunity for a career break in a challenging environment, and Anne became cook on the schooner Hoshi and then cook/mate on the ketch Lucretia. I was mate on the Hoshi when she arrived. We married in 1983.
Being strapped into the galley in bad weather to prepare hot food made her an accomplished cook. She was also a proficient navigator and yachtswoman.
In 1984 she joined Devonport Dockyard as assistant editor of the Dockyard News. She became editor and, when Babcock International took over in 1987, head of PR. In 1986 we started our own business, PC Maritime, developing training software for yachtspeople and later training simulators and electronic chart systems for commercial navigators and ships. Anne took charge of marketing and PR and was skilled at dealing with people from all over the world, conducting business in French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.
We divorced in 2014 but remained close business partners. She continued working in the company until her illness prevented it. Anne was without ego. Few knew the breadth of her accomplishments because of her characteristic modesty.
She had many friends in Modbury, south Devon, where she lived with her partner, Bob Fitzsimmons. She enjoyed cycling and was a member of the Brent Singers community choir.
Anne is survived by our sons, Nicol and Harry, by Bob and by her stepson, Mark.
