News Around the World
NEW ZEALAND In a corner of a multimillion-dollar waterfront property north of Auckland is a rusty concoction of scrap metal that might be mistaken for an ironic artwork by some avant garde sculptor. It is, in fact, more important than that: it is an iconic piece of New
Zealand’s yachting heritage. This is the remains of a tin canoe assembled from bits and pieces scavenged from a building site some 83 years ago by a nine-year-old tearaway kid from Point Chevalier called Jim Davern. It marks the start of a lifelong passion for the sea and boats, which saw Davern play a pivotal role in launching New Zealand sailing’s climb to global stardom. In early 1940 young Davern launched his tin canoe in the Meola
Creek and set off down the Waitemata Harbour. HMS Achilles was berthed at the Devonport Navy Base following its engagement in the Battle of the River Plate. Auckland had welcomed the ship with a massive parade down Queen Street and spirits were high. Davern was determined to see what the fuss was about. With the wind and tide behind him he voyaged down to Devonport
and carried out a close inspection of the warship. ‘I remember one of the crew leaning over the rail and yelling at me not to come so close,’ Davern recalls with a laugh. ‘It was as if he was worried my little canoe was going to put a dent in his ship.’ Getting back to Pt Chev against the wind and outgoing tide proved
more of a challenge and Davern finally staggered home in the dark ‘to a mum that was hysterical’. Building sites and boats were to become the defining features of
a life of adventure, risk-taking and success that would mark Davern’s passage through life. Now 92, he is not as agile as he once was, but his famous wit is as mischievous and sharp as ever. The garage of his stunning Milford Beach home is a shrine to his
sailing history, with trophies, racing pennants and photoboards attesting to his many achievements. In pride of place is the line-honours trophy he secured with Fidelisin the 1966 Sydney-Hobart classic. That victory, along with Chris Bouzaid’s One Ton Cup triumph with Rainbow II in Heligoland three years later, set New Zealand sailing on its path to international success.
16 SEAHORSE
The archetypal Kiwi battler, Davern came from humble beginnings.
He was brought up by his solo mother. ‘I never knew my father. I grew up on the streets of Point Chevalier. I was a paper boy, a butcher’s boy… I did all kinds of things.’ But boats were his passion. Following the tin canoe episode young
Davern managed to exhume an abandoned P-Class dinghy from a muddy grave. He tidied it up enough to go racing and later graduated to Z-Class and Idle Along dinghies. At one national championship he came second to Peter Mander, who went on to glory as New Zealand’s first sailing gold medallist with Jack Cropp in the Sharpies at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne. After he left school Davern wanted to be a boatbuilder but his mother
insisted he should do a building apprenticeship instead. His big break came during the construction of Auckland’s Southern Motorway. The Ministry of Works had bought up hundreds of houses to clear the route, but had no real idea what to do with them. Seeing an opportunity, Davern offered to remove the houses. With
borrowed money he bought an ex-army V8 truck, had a large steerable trailer built and set about removing some 500 houses, which he relocated to plots he purchased all over Auckland. He sold off some to generate cashflow, but retained a significant number as rental properties to establish a lucrative property portfolio. ‘People asked me where all those houses came from. I told them
I got them off the back of a truck,’ he chuckles. Following the ‘motorway success’, his company went on to relocate
about 5,000 houses (visitors to NZ are occasionally astonished to confront an entire house on the back of a truck heading to a new location – a mobility enabled by lightweight wooden construction). His newspaper advertisements had a cheeky slogan: ‘If you don’t like your neighbours I’ll move your house!’ Throughout his energetic business life Davern’s sailing passion was
not neglected. When John Lidgard started building a new 34ft Bob Stewart design Davern was not immediately impressed. ‘I thought it looked quite strange, like a launch.’ However, when he saw its performance on the water he was mighty impressed and persuaded two of his friends, Boyd Hargrave and Ron
IVOR WILKINS
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