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Now That’s a Yacht

By Bill Hoffman 

It’s a long way from a mullet boat in Pumicestone Passage to the bridge of 73.5 metre super motor yacht Laurel but it is a transition that David Clarke has taken in his stride.

The latest in a long line of Clarke mariners from Caloundra, he could have been forgiven for taking a moment to reflect on the size of that stride as he handed over charge of the $139 million vessel to a Brisbane Marine Pilot off Kawana yesterday for the last leg of a passage that has taken him across the Pacific.

Two things are certain. Thirty eight year-old David Clarke has probably one of the world’s best jobs, and he certainly has one of the world’s best bosses.

Not only did he ask David to help design the layout when he decided to upgrade from a 165 footer to the Laurel but he insisted it include a nursery, a lure to ensure David and his wife Jodie, the ship’s purser, did not feel the need to leave if they planned a family.

Now one-year-old Keira Morgan, born two years after the ship was commissioned, travels the world in style – the first engineer’s baby for company.

The Clarke family is secretive about just who that boss is, David’s father Les prepared only to say that the mystery man and his wife are delightful, down-to-earth and private.

But he was less inhibited about his son’s employers’ generosity.

The Laurel’s current voyage started in Maine, charted a course via Panama and the Galapagos Islands to Tahiti before heading to Fiji and now here.

It is with considerable pride that David says that there is now not an ocean left that his son hasn’t crossed as skipper.

It is certain that his mother Lorraine, father Les and grandfather Lloyd, who stood on Caloundra Headland yesterday to watch the Laurel steam by, would have been thinking much about family history.

David’s grand grandfather Evan first fished Pumicestone passage in 1915. Son Lloyd took over going on to be the first to commercially fish the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1954 from his vessel the Larry Cork.

The family had a slipway in Pumicestone Passage off Maloja Avenue serving a fleet of 40 trawlers that operated out of Caloundra before the stabilising of the Mooloolah River mouth.

David grew up helping out on his father’s charter vessel The Love Boat working the bar and waiting tables at weddings and parties.

The pair later headed up to the Torres Strait line fishing where he proved a capable first mate navigating while his father slept.

He worked his way up from driving a dive boat on Lizard Island to deckhand on international boat transfers, gathering sea hours and mariner tickets as he went.

David has carried the Prince of Bahrain, Sean Connery and Sidney Poitier as well as skippering the vessel used in Rush Hour Two with Jackie Chan.

It may be a world away from the Passage and the mullet runs by which family life was once measured.

But it’s a life not completely out of step with his parents who have traded their house for home on a converted pilot boat, now anchored in Cairns in readiness for a two-year navigation of Australia.

LAUREL SPECS

The Laurel, built by Delta in Seattle, when launched in 2005 was the biggest private yacht built in the United States in the past 75 years.

Designed by Donald Starkey, it has a steel hull and composite super structure.

It has a 250Kw bow thruster and 150 Kw stern thruster.

Overall length: 73m; displacement: 1,595,000kgs.

Posted In: Boating Industry on May 15, 2008 Comments (1,289)

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