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A VIEW FROM THE CHAIR OF EXCLUSIVE CLUBS AND RITES OF PASSAGE BY DAVID LEDSON, CHAIR OF THE MARITIME NEW ZEALAND AUTHORITY I had a few thoughts rumbling around in my mind as I was wondering what 'hook' I could use to get some words together for this piece of work. Finally, prompted in part by standing on the Wellington waterfront gazing at shipping movements on and across the harbour, I settled on thinking about my years at sea. I don't know what others think, but I certainly believe that a life/career at sea exposes a person to emotional and spiritual experiences that lead those who have been there to a view that these things make what they do different, and makes them different, from just about 'everyone else'. I can still clearly recall returning to New Zealand after a nine- month deployment to South East Asia in the frigate Taranaki. I was 20 at the time, meeting up with university and other 'civilian' friends, and finding what they were doing as being irrelevant and unimportant compared to the work we were doing. I remember the thrill of being 20 years old and being given responsibility during my watches for the safety of the ship and 270 crew, and thinking that nowhere else in New Zealand were people of that age trusted with so much. I remember the wretchedness in later years, of the times I walked out of my home to go down to the ship and leave my wife behind for six or seven months. Inevitably, the week preceding the morning of departure was a pretty miserable time for both of us. On the other hand, for most of us the homecoming was the reverse. I say most of us because on occasions a marriage or relationship would have disintegrated while we were overseas. My recollection is that there would not be any particular focus on counting down to getting home until we were inside the last month. And then, it would become an increasingly important part of the tempo that defined our daily routine. Then there was the excitement of raising New Zealand on the radar screen, then, normally in the morning, catching the first thin wisp of land on the horizon, the passage down the east coast, and then the Tiritiri Matangi Light, Rangitoto Beacon, the lights on Cheltenham Beach and, after what always seemed to be a long delay with Customs just off the Naval Base, finally berthing, and being reunited with friends and loved ones. I remember beautiful sunsets, clear colours and stark edges in the Pacific, more muted and soft amongst the islands of South East Asia. I have an enduring memory of a Sunday morning in the middle of the Pacific, not a breath of wind or a cloud in the sky, or anyone other than us for hundreds of miles in any direction, and the ship's cultural group singing at a church service on the flight deck. But the sea is a fickle creature, with a caress that can, in an instant, turn to a slap. So, while many moments of great beauty are etched in my memory, some pretty ugly moments are seared alongside them. Scrabbling on my stomach around the fo'c'sle attempting to secure it for sea, immersed in white water, and holding tightly onto the anchor cables because a captain casually increased speed too early as we pitched heavily into big swells coming from the Tasman into Sydney Heads. Standing on the bridge as waves broke on the bridge top, sipping water very carefully and, keeping an occasional eye on the gash can should I need to use it as 'a receptacle'. And it was often the case that I did use it for this purpose. I remember too, the absolute simplicity of life at sea. Everything revolved around the ship and the crew. The band between what was 28 Professional Skipper September/October 2012 the right thing and what was the wrong one always seemed to be a very narrow one, unlike the broad swathe with 'nuance' and 'spin' that appeared to characterise the environment ashore. There is one other very strong memory. Onboard the ship we often sensed that we were the only ones in the Navy doing the hard yards, making the sacrifices, and that what we doing was not fully valued or appreciated by the 'barrack stanchions' sitting ashore. We reckoned they saw their main purpose in life as being to make our job as difficult as they could. And we held this view notwithstanding that in our hearts we knew that these people had been through the same experiences as us. As I moved through the Navy and looked back on those 'simple and pure times' and the attitudes that characterised them, I realised that we had regarded ourselves as the members of an exclusive club. Importantly too, for me anyway, I realised that membership of the club depended not on merit, contributions made, commitment to any set of moral values, or attaining any meritorious level of performance, or anything like that; it depended solely on having survived the 'rites of passage'. The concepts of 'exclusive clubs' and 'rites of passage' are not unique to the Navy. I think you will find a similar situation existing in any field in which there are very strong, shared emotional and spiritual experiences, and an element of danger or hardship to add extra strength to the mix. These experiences, unsurprisingly, in their turn create strong emotional personal relationships and, from what I have seen, a relatively high tolerance of what many of those outside 'the club' may consider to be unacceptable behaviours. Any endeavour on the sea, because of the nature of the environment, is characterised by all of these elements. My observations have been that the rites of passage and exclusiveness of the club lead to a fairly high level of, and I grapple for the best word here but this is the one I have settled on, 'condescension' towards outsiders who have not 'been there and done that'. From some comments I've heard around the place this is possibly the situation we have with a small number of those we engage with in the maritime industry. They are 'in', and we in Maritime New Zealand are 'out'. However, as I have found out through various experiences of my own, this circumstance will never deliver the 'best result' for either the narrow exclusive 'us', or the broad collective 'us'. So while exclusive clubs with their exclusive rites of passage will always be around, and I have at times been a member of them, the successful ones among them, (and there are a few), understand that the real game is being played outside the 'club', and that they need to be fully and constructively engaged in it. This leads me to the Maritime New Zealand Funding Review Sector Reference Group, a number of industry representatives who provided a range of perspectives into the development of the Review's public consultation document. Among them were members of 'exclusive clubs' and people who had survived 'rites of passage'; and each and every one of them has made valuable important inputs to the Funding Review. On behalf of Maritime New Zealand, I would like to thank them for their contribution to this important component of our programme of work.