Bernard Rhodes
Bernard is a lifelong sailor and naval architect. He built his first boat at age 13. He designed and built Klis – which he then sailed from England to New Zealand from 1966-1969, and Klis 2 which can still be seen in Ostend Harbour. He sailed on the Greenpeace vessel the Fri for the famous anti nuclear protests to Moruroa in 1973. He designed and built the Flying Carpet using mostly locally grown timber – a unique biplane rig which sailed to Japan and back in the 1990s. Designed, built and more recently restored the Coriolanus – a quarter scale model of a top sail schooner.
Mike Delamore
Mike grew up on Great Mercury Island and moved to Waiheke in 1966 when his family bought the Matiatia Farm. He now runs the Fossil Bay Farm and when not growing olives, maintaining the accommodation or helping the Fossil Bay Steiner Schools, he can be found sailing his own boat, Cavatina, or at the helm of his narrowboat, Morgana, when travelling through the canals of the UK each winter.
Has 20 years maritime experience and over 50,000 miles sailed at sea from Alaska to the Antarctic. Holds Superyacht Master 3000Gt and NZ Offshore Master Unlimited marine tickets and is a qualified RYA tutor and examiner.
Bill Kinghorn
“I qualify for membership to the New Zealand Founders Society on my mothers side with both her parents lineages having arrived in New Zealand within the first 10 years of immigration from England.
My father immigrated from Berwickshire, Scotland during the Great Depression. His steamship travel to New Zealand as a young adult man was a life defining experience. It was his first time away from the United Kingdom and his first experience of the ocean. The romance of the sea stayed in his alter ego for his whole life and became part of my inheritance.
I have “messed around in boats” intermittently for my whole life and have owned sail boats ranging from a trailer sailer to the 35 foot keeler I have had for this last 10 years. It was not until I was in my forties that I crewed offshore and fulfilled that part of my life script. I have since made two more passages between New Zealand and Fiji.
In my working life I spent 33 years as a secondary school teacher of mathematics and physics, one year as a yacht broker and 10 years as a secondary school counsellor. During this time I have been involved in the Outdoor Education programmes of of the schools in which I was employed. I have now retired from salaried work and retain my registration with NZAC and work part time as a counsellor.”
Ben Vroom
Ben grew up in the Netherlands. He studied Mechanical and Electrical engineering and had a professional career in the technical field.
After moving to Portugal for ten years, he returned to the Netherlands to study at the Maritime College in Enkhuizen: the only maritime education facility in the world that still trains officers for commercial sailing vessels. “I started my professional maritime career as a Mate Sailing Vessels upto 3000GT”. Hard to find sailing vessels that big nowadays.
For seven years Ben has been involved in shipping cargo under sail in the Pacific Ocean, on SV Kwai. Since Ben arrived in New Zealand, he has been sailing as Mate on SV Breeze of Auckland Maritime Museum and, after moving to Waiheke Island, he joined SV Kate.