It is, perhaps, not the best day to be discussing sailing with Frank Martin. The affable Hornby chief executive has just spent the past six hours in his yacht Surprise, which he has been racing in the Ramsgate Regatta.

Unusually, there has been very little wind available in this choppy stretch of water. “I don’t think we’ve done well today. We’ve had one win and two seconds so far this week, from a field of 17, but today the wind was light and, because our handicap is high, if you have three hours of floating about doing nothing, those with the lower handicaps will do better. But we are still in the lead for the series so far.”

Mr Martin cherishes his boat, a Dynamic 37, in the same way that many of his customers cherish their Hornby, Corgi, Airfix and Scalextric collectibles. It was built in Denmark in 2002 and designed by Jan Kjaerulff — “he is well-known for fast cruisers” — and fitted for racing in a Dutch boatyard.

Mr Martin bought it six weeks ago after six years of owning an old-fashioned cruiser: “The members of the yacht club got me into gentleman’s class racing and I spent a lot of money getting that boat to go faster. We are very competitive. I won two competitions, but then everyone else increased their skill levels and I just couldn’t get my old boat to go any faster.”

He pauses, as if slightly embarrassed at spending so much money on a hobby: “Anyway, there’s not much point keeping it in the bank at the moment. And they hold their value more than cars do. The price falls off immediately when you buy a boat, but after that they tend to hold their value.”

Mr Martin is not what you might call the typical sailing type. Born into a working-class family from Salford — one of his ancestors was a hand-loom weaver — his parents moved to nearby Swinton, where he grew up.

Educated at Stand Grammar School, Whitefield, he took a BSc in management sciences at the University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology (UMIST), before joining Raleigh, the bicycle maker — then owned by TI Group — as a graduate trainee, and becoming head of a nowdefunct toy division. In the mid-1980s he joined Hasbro, where he helped to launch brands including Transformers and My Little Pony, as the UK group marketing director. From 1986 to 1995, he spent the only parts of his career to date outside the toy industry at Coloroll, the conglomerate, where he was managing director of its home interiors division and, later, managing director of Denby Pottery. He then joined Royal Winton, a rival ceramics firm, as managing director, before taking up the same post at Shaw Carpets.

In 1995, he became managing director of Humbrol, the model kit maker, then the owner of Airfix — both of which are now owned by Hornby — before being lured to his present job at the end of 2000.

So how did the sailing come about? “It was the kids. When my two daughters Sally and Lindsay were 12 and 14, they had had enough of going on beach holidays with Mum and Dad — and we’d had enough of it, too.”

The answer was to take the family on a trip to Greece where the girls took a windsurfing course and Mr Martin and his wife Stephanie, a former teacher, did a three-day course in yacht handling. “That was in Kefalonia in the summer of 1995. After doing the course, we circumnavigated Ithaca. It was great fun and we’ve been doing it ever since.”

When Mr Martin became chief executive of Hornby, which is based in Margate, he decided to get some qualifications. “The Greek islands are a bit different from the English Channel. There’s a lot more wind here, usually, for a start. So I took evening classes for a day skipper, then yacht master, then ocean yacht master — the theory, not the practical side. In theory, that means I should be able to calculate our latitude and longitude from the sexton’s sightage of the Sun — although, of course, you don’t need to do any of that, because we have GPS.”

The family has done some quite challenging trips, including a trip up to Northern Ireland via the Scilly Isles. “Steph’s the navigator. She can go down below even in the roughest water, plot our course, make sandwiches. I’m much happier at the wheel.”

Hornby is very much part of the community in Ramsgate and Margate. It sponsors one of the days of the regatta and uses it to entertain suppliers and, especially, staff. Mr Martin’s passion for the area is genuine. A local councillor tells me later how he has given his time generously to speak up for Thanet at various events aimed at attracting employers to the region.

Mr Martin said: “I like living by the sea. I lived at Kirby, on Merseyside, years ago and also in Hull. Living by the seaside is very attractive. I hadn’t realised, before I came here, that Thanet is quite deprived in economic terms, even though it is 70 miles from London and is in the supposedly prosperous South East.”

Hornby, he says, has done its best to bring high-quality employment to the area. “In the last five or six years, we have taken on twenty new graphic designers and engineers and I see no reason why we will not do that again in the next five or six years.

“Before we moved our manufacturing to China, the company had problems getting people to come and work on production lines. If the goal of this country is to send 50 per cent of the population to university, it’s just not something they want to do. The quality of the graduates we have taken on is absolutely outstanding.”

But wouldn’t most engineering and design graduates prefer to work for companies such as Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, which specialise in major projects? Apparently not. “We have a number of people who previously designed office furniture. We’ve one guy who spent five years designing handles. For him, the prospect of designing locomotives, complex engineering, pieces where we have 350 moving parts and components, or of designing Scalextric cars from CAD data provided by McLaren or Ferrari — that is very exciting.”

Mr Martin is also unabashed by the criticism that Hornby received for moving its manufacturing to China — a decision taken before he joined: “If Hornby hadn’t moved manufacturing to China, it would have gone bust. Its assets would have been snapped up overseas and there would have been nothing here at all. One of our goals is to earn as much from overseas as we do from the UK. It won’t be too long before we are a net exporter — our products are designed here, made in China and then sold overseas, then the profits flow back here.”

The Chinese supplier base has been problematic in the recent past. Sanda Kan, Hornby’s biggest supplier, nearly collapsed last year. At one point the company considered buying it but, in the end, was outbid by a Hong Kong-based buyer. “We were disappointed at the time,” Mr Martin said, “but we have a very good relationship with the new owners.”

The period before Sanda Kan was saved was an immensely stressful time for Mr Martin and his top management, but sailing helped to relieve that anxiety: “I call it a brain rinse. The greater the stress level, the more important the sailing is. It’s important to occupy yourself at weekends — when you get out there on the water and it’s blowing old boots, you have to concentrate on other things. It is absolutely, vitally important to have outside interests to balance out a stressful situation.”

Mr Martin has other concerns now, notably the strength of the dollar against sterling. Because most of his costs are in China, whose currency is linked to the greenback, he has seen a sharp rise in them during the last year. That, and the global slowdown in consumer spending, has eaten into Hornby’s profits.

Yet Mr Martin insists that brighter things lie around the corner, notably the exciting deal that he has just struck with the organisers of the 2012 London Olympic Games. “Where previously it was the dollar, the recession and supplier issues that kept me awake at night, now it is thinking about how we can maximise the opportunities from the Olympics.”

Hornby has won a licence from Locog, the Games’ organiser, to produce a range of official London 2012 merchandise that will include Corgi model taxis and buses featuring official London 2012 livery and branding. It will also produce Hornby model trains based on the Javelin trains that will ferry spectators to and from the Olympic Park transport network, Airfix kits of the main venues, including the Olympic Stadium, and Scalextric velodrome sets. The company even plans mini chocolate machines for Cadburys, which, as an official partner of the Games, will also carry branding.

Emphasising his Mancunian roots, Mr Martin dismisses claims that the Games are going to be of interest only to London and the South East: “I don’t think people realise just how, by 2012, the Olympics is going to permeate the national psyche. Yes, London is the capital and it’s where the focus is going to be, but the athletes are from all over the UK — the Velodrome in Manchester, the track and field specialists from the North East, will all be making a contribution. There will be huge local interest.”

Hornby is also looking into the idea of producing historic models based on the last time that Britain hosted the Olympics, in 1948, which could also be collectable: “It gives it depth.” It is even in the process of trying to recruit an “Olympic champion”.

“I have a very good and capable team who are very enthusiastic about our prospects. Our Olympic champion will be someone who is able to co-ordinate product development, marketing, presentations, sponsors. And, after the Olympics, there will be the legacy — sorting out new channels of distribution. A lot of this will be new to our management.”

The first special Olympics-based product will be a model of the London bus that appeared at the end of the Beijing Games last year containing celebrities such as David Beckham and Robert Plant: “It’s coming out on October 31 — which will be precisely 1,000 days before the first day of the London 2012 Games.”

Mr Martin hopes to take in some of the sailing during the Games, which will be held at Weymouth, in Dorset, but he also has a shrewd idea of where he wants to stay for most of the competition. “Please don’t print it, or others will also get the idea.”

Other unfulfilled ambitions, sailing-wise, include a journey across the Atlantic and one around the British Isles: “Steph’s pretty comfortable with it. But these are retirement ambitions.”

Hornby shareholders will hope that is some time away.

CV

Born: January 18, 1952, Salford

Education: Stand Grammar School, Whitefield; BSc, University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology

Career:

1973-77: Raleigh, product manager toy division;

1977-79: Pretty Polly, marketing manager;

1979-82: Berwick Toy Company, product development director;

1981-86: Hasbro UK, group marketing director;

1986-90: Coloroll Group, various roles, including home interiors division managing director and Denby Pottery, managing director;

1990-92: Royal Winton, managing director;

1992-95: Shaw Carpets, managing director;

1995-2000: Humbrol, chief executive;

2001-present: Hornby, chief executive

Family: Married to Stephanie since 1976. Two daughters, Lindsay and Sally