A sailor's life is the life for me

OLD SALT: Trevor Gibson went to sea as a teenager and almost 70 years later is still heavily involved in things maritime. His garage is part-shrine to a life at sea.Photo/Stuart Munro

He may not be the Ancient Mariner, but at an age he only says is somewhere between 80 and 90, Trevor Gibson is close enough.

"I'm an octogenarian... over 80 and under 90," is all Mr Gibson will say.

He has an unshakeable love of the sea: "I was conceived at sea. My dad was cook on a coaster and mum was having a trip on the boat."

Growing up in Lyttelton he used to get the odd trip on fishing trawlers. But he also earned pocket money as a paperboy, delivering milk from a two-gallon can, and at Christmas he delivered telegrams. What spare time he had was spent sailing and swimming and as a cub in the Sea Scouts.

But it was no surprise that when he left Christchurch Boys' High School in 1946, he signed on to commercial fishing boats working out of that port. Later he crewed coastal vessels.

There were moments at sea when things went awry. Like the time coming back from the Chatham Islands when some wire wound around the propeller.

"It was the last trip of the season. It was usually a time of gaiety and laughter but on that trip, as we were leaving, it was very sombre. This old dear told us we'd never get back to the mainland without something happening.

"We sailed at midnight and four hours later we got wire around the prop. We made sails out of tarpaulins, in fact anything to keep us going in that southerly storm. I think we made about one knot before another ship gave us a tow back to Wellington."

He said people still have little notion of how deadly the sea can be, and it's largely that concern which keeps him actively involved in water safety.

He had no ambition to work on international vessels. He only wanted to sail to the Chathams because his mother and two brothers had made the trip "and I wasn't going to be left out".

Mr Gibson worked on other coastal ships and bringing cement into Castlecliff gave him his first taste of the River City.

"I came up here for my Christmas holidays in 1950. I got broke and went to work in the freezing works and got enough money to head back to the South Island.

He was down south for three weeks "but Cupid had shot his arrow", so he came back to Wanganui and a year later he married Elaine Betty Lett.

A number of jobs followed before he joined the Wanganui Harbour Board in 1958 and he stayed with the board for 30 years until it was absorbed by the then Wanganui City Council. In those three decades Mr Gibson was launchmaster, master of the dredge Wanganui, port captain and finally harbour master.

But his skill and knowledge of all things nautical was never left to stagnate and he was soon helping local rowing clubs sort out the safety issues demanded by Maritime NZ.

When he did have time ashore, Mr Gibson was a keen sportsman, as a rower and hockey player. And for 10 years, from 1984 he coached senior women's hockey in the city.

He's best remembered for his sterling work for the Sea Cadet movement and was presented with a NZ Cadet Force long service medal 30 years ago.

"I was with them for ages (starting in the mid-1960s) until I got the DCM (don't come Monday). They said I was too old and they turfed me out. But I'm back there again now."

He has skippered a variety of Whanganui River vessels, is relieving master on the PS Waimarie and master of the Wairua.

Then there is his unstinting work for water safety, usually in an advisory capacity. In 1998 he was presented with the Police Crest to recognise 40 years' service to marine Search and Rescue. That same year he was made a life member of Wanganui Volunteer Coastguard.

As well as running courses for small boat owners, he chairs the Whanganui Navigation and Water Safety group.

Has Trevor Gibson slowed down any? Not a bit. There's plenty of life in this old sea dog.