Twenty years after the death of her father Sir Peter Blake, Sarah-Jane Blake reflects on his legacy and the influence he has had on her lifeSarah-Jane and her brother, James were always involved in their father’s sailing exploits, including the 1995 America’s Cup. Credit: Sarah-Jane BlakeTwenty years after the death of Sir Peter Blake, Sarah-Jane Blake talks to Alex Stone about her father\u2019s legacy and the influence he has had on her life
\nPuke h\u0101haka, ko pae tata ka kitea. Maunga teitei, ko pae tawhiti ka kitea.\u201d
\nSo goes the proverb in te reo M\u0101ori, the indigenous language of New Zealand.
\nThe saying was was composed by Sir Pou Temara; his rendering of it is: \u2018A low hill only allows limited vision. A high mountain gives distant vision.\u2019
\nThis aligns with a widespread M\u0101ori belief that we go into the future on the shoulders of others \u2013 the giants, our t\u016bpuna, our ancestors.
\nSarah-Jane with her parents Sir Peter Blake and Lady Pippa Blake. She was part of the crew during Lion\u2019s delivery trip from New Zealand to the UK for the 1985-86 Whitbread. Credit: Sarah-Jane Blake
\nIt certainly applies to the artist Sarah-Jane Blake, the creative, visionary daughter of Sir Peter Blake, one of New Zealand\u2019s greatest sailing sons, who won the 1995 and 2000 America\u2019s Cup as well as the 1989-90 Whitbread Round the World Race and the 1994 Troph\u00e9e Jules Verne.
\n\u2018I was brought up with parents who weren\u2019t doing your typical 9-5, my mother being an artist and my dad a yachtsman,\u2019 explains Sarah-Jane.
\n\u2018We were used to long periods of Dad being away or being on the road following him or joining in. Holidays were spent on sailing adventures and even the smallest outing with my parents, like a walk, would most likely involve climbing a cliff or wading through a river; they would never take the easy route.
\n\u2018My father was very passionate about the environment and could see clearly the problems, such as climate change, that the world was and is, at greater acceleration, facing.
\nAfter years of sailing around the world he had seen first-hand a decline in the environment.\u2019
\nSarah-Jane and her husband Alistar Moore who sailed with Sir Peter Blake. Credit: Lisa Hamilton\/Walheke Weekender
\nThis foresight inspired the work of the 36m (118ft) expedition schooner, Seamaster, now called Tara, which Sir Peter Blake sailed around the world to draw attention to threats to the environment.
\nOn 5 December 2001, while leading an expedition to the Amazon, he was murdered by pirates after they boarded Seamaster at Fazendinha, close to the Brazilian city of Macapa.
\n\u2018His passion for the environment was so great and so clear,\u2019 says Sarah-Jane.
\nArticle continues below\u2026<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSteinlager 2: On board Sir Peter Blake\u2019s refitted Whitbread champion<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIn 22 May 1990, Steinlager 2 \u2013 skippered by Peter Blake and crewed by 14 fellow New Zealanders \u2013 crossed\u2026<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMike Horn: From the Amazon to the Arctic Ocean and beyond<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMike Horn is not a man you forget easily, yet if you were to name the world\u2019s most famous sailors,\u2026<\/p>\n
\u2018It was hard not to be affected by it, hard for it not to rub off on you. I am also acutely aware of these issues, having been inspired by my father, that I cannot help but speak about them in some way through my work.
\n\u2018He, one individual, with a great team, had effected some change or awareness for these issues and I, having witnessed this, believe that we all can and need to desperately fight the good fight as our futures and that of our home, the planet, depend on it.
\n\u2018We need to do this in teams, community teams made up of different types of everyday people with differing skills. We don\u2019t just need superstars for these changes.\u2019
\nAs Sarah-Jane highlights, Sir Peter\u2019s most successful sailing teams were \u2018not made up of the most skilled individuals but the best collective group \u2013 people who could rely on each other to get the job done and do it with a smile on their faces. I think this idea of teamwork was one of the most inspiring things about my father.\u2019
\nSailing with Sir Peter Blake
\nEducated in the UK at Chichester, where the family has a home in nearby Emsworth, and then Dorset, Sarah-Jane studied drama at Bristol University.
\nSir Peter Bake encouraged his creative daughter, but she found herself \u2018less and less into performing, and more into behind the scenes.\u2019
\nSarah-Jane has been influenced by her ocean-loving father and her artist mother, Lady Pippa. Credit: Sarah-Jane Blake
\nSo she followed up with a diploma in theatre design, with a special interest in costume.
\nHer childhood was punctuated with sailing cruises to all parts of the world \u2013 the Pacific islands, Easter Island and Patagonia.
\n\u2018Dad would phone and say, \u201cCome and join us,\u201d from Antarctica or the Amazon. It was too hard to refuse. A childhood of travel and adventure has continued to influence me with a lust to keep finding out what is over the horizon \u2013 physically and metaphysically. I have a curious mind,\u2019 she notes.
\nJust like her father and mother, Sarah-Jane\u2019s own wanderlust soon set in, travelling in Nepal, where she taught drama at the International School in Kathmandu, before heading to India, Thailand, and Cambodia.
\n\u2018I was very naive, not very political, in the early 2000s,\u2019 she recalls.
\nThen she got a call. A documentary film was being made about Sir Peter Blake in New Zealand. Could she fly to the country?
\n\u2018At the time, I had no plans of going there,\u2019 she recalls, but she went and then stayed.
\nSarah-Jane met her husband Alistair Moore while sailing on Lion New Zealand, the Ron Holland- designed masthead sloop which was Sir Peter\u2019s 1985-86 Whitbread Round the World yacht.
\nAlistair grew up in Auckland and had studied outdoor education at Auckland\u2019s University of Technology before he found work on the media boat for Bruno Troubl\u00e9 at the 1999 Louis Vuitton Cup in the Hauraki Gulf.
\nHe met Lady Pippa Blake, and \u2018cheekily\u2019 asked her to put his CV in front of her famous husband.
\nIt worked, and Alistair started working on Seamaster, then the environmental-campaigning sailboat of the Jacques Cousteau Foundation.
\n\u2018My first-ever paycheck was from Cousteau. And I still have an original red beanie,\u2019 recalls Alistair, who spent two years working on Seamaster.
\nSir Peter Blake was captain of the foundation from 1997 until 2000 when he left to set up Blake Expeditions.
\nStarting them young. Sarah-Jane helming Lion of New Zealand as a two-year-old. Credit: Sarah-Jane Blake
\nAlistair invited Sarah-Jane to sail on Lion New Zealand in the 2008 Royal Akarana Yacht Club Race to Noumea.
\nTheir romance was forged in a storm at sea.
\nSarah-Jane had last been on Lion as a two-year-old, sailing from New Zealand to England. Alistair was the skipper on the fateful voyage to Noumea, and the storm on the return trip that defined it.
\nFor three days, Lion sailed under storm jib alone, in 70 knots of wind. The yacht was knocked down three times.
\n\u2018I wouldn\u2019t want to do that again,\u2019 Sarah-Jane says firmly. \u2018When we got back to New Zealand, we moved in together.\u2019
\nThe call of the ocean
\nThe next five years were spent with Alistair, working on boats around the world. \u2018But I felt a bit lost, out of the theatre,\u2019 says Sarah-Jane.
\nAlistair ran the Oman sailing programme, before Sarah-Jane worked for the Irish Youth Sailing Academy.
\nFollowing sponsorship from the Dubai Government, the couple also crewed a Volvo 70 on a tour of 200 venues including Ireland, Lisbon, the Caribbean, Pacific Islands and Australia.
\nBig Red \u2013 Steinlager 2. Her light air speeds led to Sir Peter Blake\u2019s victory in the 89-90 Whitbread. Credit: Getty
\nMotivated by a desire to sail on their own, they bought the 43ft Darth Vader in 2013, but continued to sail commercially, working for five years with the New Zealand Sailing Trust, not only taking students out on Lion but also on Sir Peter\u2019s winning Whitbread yacht, Steinlager 2.
\nBy 2017 and after a six-month refit, they set off to cruise the world on Darth Vader.
\nThey got as far as Tonga, when an electrical issue surfaced; it was finally found to be an earth leak from a hidden screw driven into an anchor winch power cable.
\nThey continued cruising with a disabled electrical system, reaching Vanuatu and Fiji, before deciding to return to New Zealand.
\nDarth Vader was upgraded again, fitted with a watermaker and more solar power for extended bluewater sailing.
\nTo get by, both Sarah-Jane and Alistair worked on commercial boats.
\nBut the creative spark burned bright through all this. Sarah-Jane developed a performance piece, based on the Edward Lear poem, The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, which she and Alistair perform on Darth Vader at fringe festivals around New Zealand.
\nSarah-Jane has also run creative workshops at the New Zealand Maritime Museum, helping children build and design model boats.
\nMiniature worlds and puppetry feature in her simultaneous virtual reality and live performance work, which has grown out of her sailing blog, www.darthandstormy.com
\n\u2018My mother has been a big influence on me in terms of pursuing art and often took me to exhibitions, pointing out artists of interest in books and exposing me to potentially more bohemian ideas, showing me there were alternative ways of looking at the world,\u2019 says Sarah-Jane.
\nSarah-Jane is an experimental artist, performance designer and deviser, as well as a sailor. Credit: Sarah-Jane Blake
\n\u2018Both my parents have influenced me greatly and I found myself in the past years living on a boat and making art below decks; so quite a combination has transpired.\u2019
\nBut there are challenges in all of this.
\n\u2018When I was two years old I sailed from New Zealand to the UK and I think this early childhood influence has drawn me back to being on the sea time and again. It is a spiritual home to me and feels a naturally instinctive place to be. At the same time, being on the sea and being deprived of much stimulus is a great place for an imagination to thrive, for there is not, at times, much else going on!\u2019
\nEnvironmental message
\nCOVID-19 has stifled Sarah-Jane and Alistair\u2019s current cruising plans.
\nSir Peter Blake founded Team New Zealand before winning the 1995 and 2000 America\u2019s Cup. Credit: Getty
\nInstead, they have shifted their energies to fixing up their home on Waiheke, and Sarah-Jane has gone back to concentrating on her art.
\nAn impressive, emerging artist with her own take on creativity, Sarah-Jane combines performance and visual art, while trying to meld it into an ocean-cruising lifestyle.
\nShe\u2019s recently developed a mystery trail for locals to explore on her home island of Waiheke.
\nShe has also produced a series of mixed-media prints which are sold to support the Hauraki Gulf Conservation Trust and the Waiheke Marine Project.
\n\u2018The prints are a response to the declining state of the Hauraki Gulf, and the world\u2019s oceans, which I have seen first-hand\u2026 but it\u2019s also a celebration of the ocean and the wonderful creatures that inhabit it,\u2019 she explains.
\nAnd perhaps the COVID-cut trip was a blessing in disguise.
\n\u2018There are better things we can do for the world right now, rather than bugger off and do a jolly,\u2019 notes Alistair.
\nAlex Stone is a Waiheke Island-based writer, inventor, artist and sailor.
\nSarah-Jane agrees: \u2018We have a massive sense of doing something bigger than us, that\u2019s good and wholesome. We want to restart people caring about the environment, as it must be cared for. We want to make a difference.\u2019
\nSarah-Jane Blake is certainly adding to the legacy of her parents, and in the most honourable way possible, by combining their remarkable attributes: as artist, explorer, adventurer, and a deviser of new things entirely.
\nThis article was originally published on yachtingmonthly.com on 25\/11\/21
\nThe post On the shoulders of a giant: the legacy of Sir Peter Blake appeared first on Yachting World.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Twenty years after the death of her father Sir Peter Blake, Sarah-Jane Blake reflects on his legacy and the influence he has had on her lifeSarah-Jane and her brother, James were always involved in their father’s sailing exploits, including the … <\/p>\n