Intrepid oarsman became the first to row solo from New Zealand to Australia
Colin Quincey, who has died aged 73, was the first person to row from New Zealand to Australia. The voyage, in 1977, took him nine weeks, and he had one more day’s worth of food when his boat, the Tasman Trespasser, crash-landed on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.
The journey, he recalled, was a matter of ‘‘eat, sleep, row’’, but the daily grind was interrupted by an unexpected encounter. One morning, when Quincey was still half asleep, an orca that was longer than his boat approached him. Quincey began rowing frantically before realising that his efforts were futile.
‘‘I stopped and sat and chilled out and watched,’’ he recalled. ‘‘It came within about
20 feet of the boat and had a look for a few seconds. There was this big, black eye . . . looking at me.
‘‘The blackness of it was intense. I looked back and there was some sort of communication there. Spiritual? Yes. Absolutely magic. Was the trip worth it? Yeah, for that 15 seconds, yes.’’
Colin Quincey was born in Hull, east Yorkshire, in northern England. Adventurous from an early age, when he was 17 he left to take part in a round-the-world race for tall ships, and spent time on the German square rigger George Voch. When the boat arrived in Hawaii, Quincey stayed on and lived there for some years.
He spent time as an English teacher and also served in the New Zealand navy, eventually settling in New Zealand and working with young people on tall ships expeditions while taking jobs such as housepainting.
While working on The Spirit of Adventure he became dismayed at the cadets’ lack of spirit and their unwillingness to push their limits. Out of this came his Tasman Trespasser scheme, and after six months’ planning he set off from Hokianga Harbour in the open wooden Yorkshire dory he had built himself.
He trained for his crossing by towing tyres behind a dinghy in Waitemata¯ Harbour, ‘‘combined with a lot of careful research’’. On the journey itself, he recalled, ‘‘to entertain myself (apart from smoking) I would navigate constantly [using a sextant], sing songs, read books and do mathematical problems.’’
On his first day he found himself surfing a
6-metre wave, and the journey, unsurprisingly, took a physical toll, Quincey suffering from blisters, boils and salt sores, as well as a pulled back muscle that prevented him from rowing for 10 days.
His life after his crossing was eventful, including many years in the New Zealand navy, for which he ran survival courses.
‘‘Normal problems were never big enough for him,’’ his son Shaun recalled. ‘‘He needed bigger challenges.’’ These included an attempt to sail solo to Tonga which ended when he needed rescuing after his boat struck a container.
He later worked with disadvantaged children in Tonga, Thailand and Cambodia, and when he was 60 he moved to Burma to help build a school – but was kidnapped by local militia and held hostage for three months. He and two others escaped by swimming along the Mekong River.
In 2010, Shaun Quincey emulated his father’s achievement, albeit in the opposite direction, rowing from Australia to New Zealand in 54 days. Both men’s boats are kept at Auckland’s Maritime Museum.
Colin Quincey spent the last years of his life in Paihia, where he carried on rowing and worked as a volunteer for the Citizens Advice Bureau. When lung cancer was diagnosed in April, he told Shaun he had already ‘‘lived his bucket list in reverse’’, having already done everything he’d wanted to.
Quincey, who was appointed MBE, was married three times – ‘‘You could say he was a hard man to hang on to,’’ said Shaun, who survives him, as do two other sons. –
‘‘There was this big, black eye . . . looking at me. The blackness of it was intense. Spiritual? Yes. Absolutely magic. Was the trip worth it? For that 15 seconds, yes.’’ Colin Quincey on his encounter with an orca