Reflections
The David Blackley Story
“Adventure may hurt you, but monotony will kill you,” says the adage from writer Marcus Purvis. Now aged 90 and counting, David Blackley’s living proof that a life of adventure – on land, on sea and in the air – is an excellent prescription for longevity. Here’s his story.
Born in 1930, David grew up in Heretaunga and went to boarding school in Huntley. During WWII his father Samual headed the Emergency Precaution Scheme (EPS), the forerunner of Civil Defence. Demonstrating an early aptitude for invention and improvisation, during his school years David rebuilt a 1914 Humber motorcycle he’d found in a shed. It wasn’t the most reliable motorcycle and by necessity he learned the crafty art of boogieing mechanical things.
Over the next few years he bought and sold a series of vehicles, a Model T car, a Vim truck, a 1928 JAP motorcycle and an Indian motorcycle. On the latter, he and friend Jakes White rode over the Haast Pass, believed to be the first vehicle crossing of that pass.
The Blackley family owned a farm at Wairoa and David decided on farming as a career. A year later, he did his Compulsory Military Training (CMT) with the Air Force. There he learned to fly Tiger Moths, going solo after only three hours of instruction.
But he had itchy feet and, with CMT completed, decided to drive a car from London to Cape Town across the Sahara Desert. He persuaded an old school friend (Robert Benjamin) to join him and arranged to buy a Morris Minor convertible in London. While hardly renowned as an off-roader, the Morris was light, made even lighter when the pair removed the bumpers, rear seats and door linings, which were sent to New Zealand by ship.
Besides camping and personal gear, the Morris was loaded with tools, spares, jacks, tow ropes, sand mats, five jerry cans of fuel, a rifle, a shotgun and two pistols. The pair obtained an introductory letter from Lord Nuffield, then CEO of Nuffield Group, the Morris agents, which proved more than useful on the trip.
Setting out from London in 1953, they drove through France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Kemo [Central African Republic], Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania,
Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa, arriving in Cape Town some six months later.
Space forbids a full description of their journey. As can be imagined it was full of incidents – digging and pushing the Morris out of the sand on countless occasions, dealing with sand storms, evaporating petrol, overheating radiators, a blown gearbox and differential, dodgy roads and bridges, flat tyres, Mau Mau terrorists, wild game and more. On reaching Cape Town David shipped the Morris to New Zealand where it was eventually sold.
He married Cloie (nee Green) in 1956 and the couple spent their four and half month honeymoon travelling South America. Much of this was spent driving a Series I Landrover from Brazil, across to Chile, then northwards through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and on to Panama. David had to patch the Landrover’s front suspension following an argument with a truck, all done while suffering from jaundice fever.
Back in New Zealand, the couple returned to farming and eventually had four children – Mary Rose, Gabrielle, Alice and Eve. In 1959 David purchased a derelict 450-acre farm overlooking Papamoa, which they named Summerhill and where they continue to live today. Prior to this he’d got back into flying by buying an Auster Alpine. Many years later he would get into Microlights in a big way.
In 1969 he bought the John Lidgard-designed-and-built
10.4m yacht Legend. With Cloie navigating – it was her first offshore voyage – David entered Legend in the 1971 Whangarei to Noumea Race and to everyone’s surprise finished third in their class.
Their four children flew up to Noumea to join Legend and the Blackley family cruised New Caledonia, Loyalty Islands, New Hebrides, Cairns and on to Brisbane.
“I always remember that voyage, the navigation was very difficult,” says Cloie. The family flew home from Brisbane, while David continued solo to New Zealand via Lord Howe Island. Legend was sold shortly afterwards.
The following year, David bought a part-finished 13.7m cutter from boatbuilder Mick Orchard (Reflections, December 2016), and in partnership with Peter Levin, employed Orchard to finish it. This became Legend II. The Blackley family plus Levin sailed Legend II to Fiji in 1974, where David discovered the 90ha Katafaga Island in the northern Lau group.
Katafaga island captured his heart and after some negotiating, he purchased it in 1975 for $175,000 Fijian dollars. Katafaga was to become an important part of the Blackley family for the next 20 years.
David and his crew sailed Legend II to Katafaga later that year carrying a GRP runabout, a disassembled cart, outboard, fuel and a motorcycle. But as he would quickly discover, being an absentee owner has its own issues.
The only access was by boat, freshwater was limited, while managing the local Fijian staff from afar presented numerous challenges. He tried stocking the island with Wiltshire sheep and cattle, but they were all eaten by the locals. Typically, the family would spend winters on the island, returning to New Zealand to run the family farm during summers. David used Legend II three times to ship supplies to Katafaga.
Besides these voyages, as a family they had a number of other adventures including another trip to Africa to revisit some of the places David had stopped at enroute to Cape Town and a 4000-mile Mediterranean cruise in a 10m GRP bilge keeler. He also carried out a number of horseback treks in New Zealand with either Cloie or his daughter Alice. One of these was a horse trek in Colorado, USA.
It was during their return from the Colorado trip David
had his closest shave. Leaving the USA, he’d purchased a 2.7m Zodiac and 25hp Evinrude, which he took as hand luggage to Fiji. While Cloie carried on to New Zealand, David assembled and tested his inflatable in the hotel swimming pool, then set off from Nandi to Katafaga 200nm across the Koro Sea.
Enroute he capsized but managed to paddle the upturned Zodiac to Nairai Island. With the help of locals there, he righted the dinghy, flushed the engine, restarted it and carried on to Katafaga. But having lost his compass in the capsize, when the sun disappeared in the heat haze it was only by sheer luck he found Katafaga. “I only had a few teaspoons of petrol left,” he says matter-of-factly.
Seeking a more substantial workboat to use around the island, in 1978 he commissioned a new Salthouse Coronet 25 trailer yacht. Not bothering with bureaucracies such as Category One or even customs clearance, David and Cloie sailed
Laca Lai Lai from Auckland to Katafaga, encountering a 24-hour storm enroute. “It was a bit bumpy,” says David, with Cloie adding, “I was very pleased to get there.”
A few years later he commissioned Duthie Lidgard to design a 7.7m trailer yacht, which he fitted with a Bukh saildrive and a Freedom style unstayed rig. “The rig was heavy which made Free tender.” He and Cloie sailed Free from Plimmerton to Stewart Island, intending to explore Fiordland. But the Bukh’s propeller was damaged at Stewart Island and the couple were forced to skip the Fiordland leg, instead sailing Free to Bluff and returning home by road.
He later built another 8.4m trailer yacht to his own design,
Windsong. This time he designed and built a much lighter unstayed rig in carbon fibre, a major improvement. The Blackley’s cruised Windsong extensively up the Northland coast.
In 1989 he decided to build a 38m ocean-going schooner, capable of taking up 20 passengers and 40 tons of cargo. Seeking a naval architect, David advertised in the Auckland Herald and Gary Underwood (Reflections, August 2019) responded.
Underwood introduced Blackley to the late Digby Taylor, whom, as many readers will recall, headed up two New Zealand entries in the then Whitbread Around the World Race. Taylor supplied the steel components from his CAD cutting service. Unfortunately, David and Taylor had a falling out which ended up in court. Compounding this, the original builder went bankrupt, so David had to uplift his part-finished hull from the factory.
Employing his own welders, David finished Adventure
sufficiently to enable her to be motored to Tauranga. As he lacked the necessary ticket, he employed the late Gerry Clarke as skipper. Once in Tauranga David and a team of volunteers finished Adventure.
In 1992, David and Cloie, with a volunteer crew of eight (plus a single paying passenger) set off in Adventure for San Juan, Puerto Rico, to join a Tall Ships Regatta celebrating the Christopher Columbus 1492 voyage. Originally intending to voyage to San Juan via Cape Horn, a week into the trip David decided it would take too long and sailed there via the Panama Canal.
After reaching Puerto Rico, a large fleet of tall ships voyaged to New York, then on to Boston, the starting point for the Tall Ships Race across the Atlantic to Liverpool. The North Atlantic is a challenging environment, but with her scratch crew Adventure won her class. The prize was awarded by the King and Queen of Spain.
David, Cloie and two crew then sailed Adventure back to New Zealand via Panama. In Adventure they made another cruise to Fiji, Wallis Island, Samoa and Tonga a year later, but the expense of running the 38m yacht proved to be a burden and in 1995 he sold her to the Indonesian Navy.
He had to deliver Adventure to Indonesia and the sale price was conditional upon winning the Indonesian Jubilee of Independence Tall Ships Race from Lambok to Jakarta. Fortunately for David’s wallet, Adventure won the three-day race and the sale was concluded.
There have been several other adventures since then. One was cruising the English and French canals in a 3.6m inflatable, fitted with plywood floor and tent, powered by an 8hp Honda outboard. David named his home-built craft The Ark. He and Cloie have also travelled the Silk Road by train from Beijing to Moscow.
They re-developed their Summerhill farm to include an 18-hole golf course, which has since been sold. He started planting pine trees during the 1960s, but since then with daughter Gabrielle Walton and her husband Andrew, the forestry operation has been extended to over 50% of the farm, specialising in the likes of cypress, Tasmanian blackwood, Victorian ash, Sydney blue gum, as well as poplar, alder, paulownia and redwood.
Many years ago, David invented the Rocket Wool Press, a hydraulic wool press driven from a tractor’s rear hydraulic takeoff. He built a number of these for local farmers, but eventually sold the manufacturing rights to an Australian company.
The family home, nestling high on a hill above Papamoa Beach, is a treasure trove of maps, diaries, clippings and photo albums, enough to occupy a researcher for years.
David has written a book of his adventures – Born for Adventure – which is now out of print. He remains as sharp as a tack and at the time of writing was busy organising his 90th birthday party. The Covid-19 virus has brought David and Cloie’s wandering daughters back to New Zealand and they now have nine grandchildren.
“No great grandchildren yet, but we’re hoping for some soon.” In a PC world gone mad, you have to hugely admire the couple. They’ve lived life on their terms and wrung every possible adventure from it. Here’s to David and Cloie Blackley and their inspirational life that’s far from over.bnz