Alastair Shanks was born in Scotland in April 1940, towards the end of the so-called phoney war. Then aged 60, Alastair’s father Charles Shanks was too old to serve in the military and spent the war years at Bletchley Park helping decipher the German Enigma coding machine, which at the time most considered unbreakable.
When the war ended, Charles decided the UK was no place to bring up his two sons and that the colonies offered a better life.
“Canada was too cold, Australia was too hot, and New Zealand seemed about right,” recalls Shanks about his father’s logical reasoning.
The Shanks family arrived in New Zealand in 1947, and the following year, they bought an 8,000ha farm in the Waihopai Valley, some 40km out of Blenheim.
Shanks was always drawn to the sea and in the mid-1950s built a little sailing dinghy from plans he found in a magazine. Some years later, while at Lincoln College, he crewed on a friend’s 6.7m Harrison Butler Z4 keeler, Ballerina. Shanks bought her in 1963 and sailed her to Picton.
“That was my first keeler. She had manila ropes and canvas sails; the only thing we had for the trip was a compass. When I arrived, she was only the second boat in Waikawa Bay with a mast.”
The other yacht at Waikawa was owned by Snow Gatehouse, who recruited Shanks to help crew his yacht in the 1967 Whangarei to Noumea race.
“That was my first offshore race, and I was hooked.”
While in Noumea, Shanks met the late Darcy Whiting and his 11.2m yacht Coruba, designed and built by the late John Lidgard.
“I thought Coruba was the bee’s knees. Back home, I went to see John and asked him to build me the hull and decks of an 11.2m fast cruiser.”
When finished, Shanks trucked the empty hull and decks to Paremata, where she was launched without a keel. The yacht was towed across Cook Strait to Picton behind a friend’s launch, then Shanks towed her the 64km to the farm behind his tractor.
Shanks took two years to finish what became Spero and launched her in 1975. Within a week of launching, Shanks took a few of his farming friends around the North Island in Spero with numerous stops, including Auckland, to show Lidgard the finished article.
“I showed John all my mistakes, but he was pretty complimentary.”
The friendliness of the local Tauranga yachties particularly impressed Shanks, and he entered the inaugural Tauranga to Vila race the following year.
Shanks would do another three Tauranga to Vila races, his best being in 1982, but more on that later.
Keen for more, the following year Shanks entered Spero in the Auckland to Fiji race with John and the late Heather Lidgard crewing. The remainder of the crew were Alastair’s farming friends. It was the days of big fleets, and that year’s race had 105 entries, necessitating the fleets being divided into two groups, one racing to Suva, the other to Lautoka.
“We had a great time, lots of fun. After the race, I stayed up there cruising for a few months, and then I had to come home to do the shearing.”
The scene had been set for the future. Shanks commonly employed between three and four staff to run the farm, but there wasn’t enough work during the winter months to keep them all gainfully employed.
“I would have had to make someone redundant for the winter, so I decided it might as well be me. So, I’d take off sailing nearly every winter.”
Keen for a bigger boat to do the 1979 TransPac Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu, Shanks sold Spero and commissioned Lidgard to design and build a 14m IOR yacht, Nero.
“I wasn’t going to spend another two years finishing a boat off, so I got John to do the whole thing.”
Launched in March 1979, Shanks sailed Nero to Los Angeles shortly after via Tahiti, Tuamotu and the Marquesas. Once again, the Lidgards joined him for the race, with Heather navigating.
“We had quite a good crew in that first TransPac, but it was frustrating as we had quite light conditions.”
Shanks went on to do another three TransPac races.
In 1981, Shanks did another Auckland to Suva Race in Nero but didn’t place. While in Suva, Shanks was invited to crew on the S&S-designed yacht Ta’Aroa in the Sydney to Rio race. Shanks agreed, provided he was a watch captain and the navigator, which was just as well.
“The owner never did a bloody thing and stayed in his cabin all day. We’d take breakfast to him every morning, and that was all we saw of him.” Nevertheless, Ta’Aroa won the race on corrected time by four days.
In 1982, Shanks did his fourth Tauranga to Vila race, with considerably better results, with Nero winning line, IOR and PHRF honours, and the Navigators prize.
After the 1983 Around the North Island Race, Shanks cruised Nero to the Solomon Islands, where an American offered to buy her. Shanks initially refused, but when the money became irresistible, he accepted on the condition that the sale occur after that race. Shanks did this race with Lidgards’ son Kevin as crew.
With Nero sold, Shanks immediately commissioned John and Kevin Lidgard to design and build a bigger 15.3m racer/cruiser for the 1984 Clipper Cup. The yacht was partly planked in kahikatea when the decision was made to make it more racer than cruiser, so the topsides were done in Divinycell GRP foam. Black Sheep was fitted out as a state-of-the-art IOR design and performed exceptionally well upwind in a breeze.
For reasons known only to the selectors, despite easily winning the trials, Black Sheep did not make the A team, which were all shipped to Hawaii, and was instead relegated to the B team, which meant having to sail there. Black Sheep entered and won the Bay of Islands to Tahiti race as part of her trip to Honolulu.
With Graeme Woodroffe helming and Shanks navigating, Black Sheep did well in the first race for the Clipper Cup until she lost her mast. Sparcraft in Los Angeles managed to build and air freight a replacement mast to Honolulu within 36 hours, and Black Sheep only missed one race.
However, hitting a rock in the long race cost Black Sheep any chance of doing well. Shanks sailed Black Sheep back to New Zealand, then on to Australia, where she was chartered by a Hong Kong syndicate for the Sydney to Hobart race.
The following year, Shanks did the first Auckland to Mooloolaba race, which they won on line by two days and 17 hours on corrected time.
“We had 50 knots on the nose most of the way, but she [Black Sheep] was a big, powerful boat, and she just charged through it.”
The following year, in 1987, Shanks sailed Black Sheep across the Pacific to San Francisco, down to Los Angeles for the TransPac, and then back to San Francisco for the Big Boat series, where they finished 8th in class.
Things didn’t go well for the trip home. With a green pick-up crew, Shanks set sail for New Zealand. Black Sheep lost her mast four hundred miles out due to a failed rigging swage. Shanks told his crew that beating back against the trades and waiting for a replacement mast might take two months, whereas if they kept going with a jury-rigged spinnaker pole, they’d be home in weeks.
“So, we trundled back to Auckland with just the spinnaker pole.”
Prior to this, Shanks married Dinah ‘Dinny’ (nee Anderson), who coincidentally was a close neighbour of this writer growing up. The couple were engaged when Shanks was asked to skipper a friend’s 14.3m yacht in Tonga for a month before delivering her back to Wellington. Blissfully ignorant of sailing, let alone offshore voyaging, Anderson accompanied Shanks for the trip, which went well until they got hammered off the Wairarapa coast.
“When we got into Wellington, it was blowing 70 knots. It was bloody awful.”
Unfazed by the experience, Anderson married Shanks, and the couple later had two daughters, Lavinia and Vanessa.
In 1989, Shanks entered Black Sheep in the Auckland, Suva, Guam, and Fukuoka races and sold the yacht in Japan afterwards.
Shanks has done his share of deliveries. His first delivery was skippering Woodroft’s 15.2m, Laurie Davison designed, Jumping Jack Flash back to Los Angeles after they had done the 1983 TransPac.
“Three other skippers offered me $3,500 to sail their yachts back to LA. That’s when I first discovered people got paid to go sailing!”
Good navigators were difficult to find in those pre-GPS days, and Shanks soon became in demand. His next significant contract was delivering the late Sir Peter Blake’s 20m C&C-designed Archangel from Fort Lauderdale to England in 1995. After surviving a 110-knot hurricane in Bermuda, Shanks had to sail Archangel nearly as far north as Newfoundland to escape other hurricanes and reach England.
Shanks has made numerous other deliveries, including Hong Kong to Picton, Auckland to Honolulu, and Bali to Picton. He has clocked up an impressive 250,000nm offshore, making him one of this country’s more experienced offshore skippers.
Looking back, Shanks considers himself lucky to have done his IOR racing in the days before sponsorship, and all his campaigns have been entirely self-funded.
“I always thought that’s the way it should be.”
In those days, friendships and having fun were everything. These aspects have been lost today when top-level sailing has become a battle of who has the biggest chequebook and can afford the best people.
Shanks still belongs firmly in the traditional navigator’s school camp.
“I’ve always thought that’s how it should be. I love navigating the traditional way, and it’s so exciting making a landfall.”
Since selling Black Sheep, Shanks owned the Chris Robertson Quando for a couple of years, which he sold when someone offered to buy her.
“The best time to sell a boat is when someone wants it.”
This was in 2001. Then Shanks heard about a 17m Jim Dewar-designed and built aluminium yacht in Bali, and to cut a long story short, they bought her and sailed her home via Darwin, the Great Barrier Reef, and across the Tasman. The Shanks family still owns Skara Brae, and in 2003, they spent ten weeks cruising the yacht from Waikawa, Vila, New Caledonia, and returned.
“The girls [Lavinia and Vanessa] got a much better education than they would have had at school.”
The farm was sold seven years ago, and Shanks has moved to a lifestyle block just outside Blenheim.
“The farm’s all planted in pine trees now, which is sad.”
Looking back from sheep farming to IOR racing and ocean deliveries, Shanks has no regrets;
“I’ve had a great life, loved the farming, loved the sailing, and I’ve made a tremendous number of friends around the world through sailing.”
Photos courtesy of Alastair and Dinny Shanks
