Lake Taupō's nautical saga: Dreams, disasters, detours and a love story
Dreams, disasters, detours and even a long-distance love story... On Lake Taupō, Sue Hoffart finds a nautical saga that has it all.
Although Dave Nesbitt may have been born to sail, he’s taken some unlikely detours en route to yacht ownership. And he’s certainly struck some rough water along the way.
Dave Nesbitt, gentleman of the lake.
The man at the helm of Taupō Sailing Adventures is a former motorbike racer who lists truck driving, motel ownership and bar management among his previous careers. None of these diversions come close to the thrill he experiences running his yacht tour company alongside wife Jess, on Aotearoa’s largest lake.
Dave has been taking tourists onto this water body for more than 16 years, offering regular daily trips as well as private charters and sunset tours to the Ngātoroirangi Mine Bay Māori rock carvings.
Ngātoroirangi Mine Bay rock carvings.
Latterly, he has started showing guests the more remote western side of the lake, with its waterfalls and pristine private coves. On days off, he and Jess will either tick off maintenance jobs or head out on their 14m sloop Kindred Spirit to explore new corners of the lake, or push the vessel into a bracing breeze.
“Once I got on the lake, I just fell in love with sailing and realised what Dad was trying to show me as a kid,” Dave says.
Once I got on the lake, I just fell in love with sailing.
His father, Tony Nesbitt, raced motorcycles and offshore powerboats and ran both the Christchurch and Wellington speedways. The elder Nesbitt was also a sailor, who spent 20 years living on a yacht. “Boats and motorbikes are in our blood,” Dave says. “But I hadn’t really learnt to sail because Dad did it all and I just did what I was told.”
Dave came to understand the allure of wind-powered boating much later, after giving up truck driving to help run a motel, restaurant and bar on the lakefront. He operated the tourism business alongside his then-wife and her parents.
The sociable father of two proved a natural in the people-focused hospitality industry, and it turned out sailing suited him too. He soon progressed to racing his own keel boat before leasing a yacht to carry paying passengers, which meant he could justify spending even more time on the water.
Kindred Spirit finds kindred spirits.
He cheerfully clocked up 110-hour weeks, taking visitors sailing during the day and devoting evenings to the motel and restaurant.
His love for yachting outlasted both that marriage and the motel business, with the global financial crisis of the late noughties landing on top of a bad lease deal.
“It was all really bad timing. We’d just built a brand-new house, I couldn’t pay the lease on the yacht. I walked away from the motel and my marriage with a TV, a fridge and a bed, and I lived in a garage to make ends meet.”
He found work managing an Irish bar for a fraction of his previous earnings. There were perks, though: the chefs would slip him leftovers to help feed the son who lived with him. And his boss became a mentor and financial backer.
“The owner became a friend. He financed me to buy my first yacht, Fearless, because he believed in what I could do. He knew I could entertain people and create a really good product – he could see it was my passion.”
Within eight years, the debt had been repaid and business was going well, as word of the boat and its enthusiastic owner reached growing numbers of international travellers. Then, in February 2016, a German backpacker stepped on board and shattered the captain’s plans to remain a bachelor for life while travelling the world on a motorbike.
The customs officer from Bremerhaven wasn’t supposed to be there. She’d initially tried to book a tour with the competition, and Dave’s boat had been chartered by a wealthy customer. But it turned out the client wanted company, the young German landlubber was destined to become a fine sailor, and Dave’s single days were numbered.
“We hit it off right away,” Dave says of the day he met his future wife. “She had no experience on boats but she loved it. We chatted right from the start and we never stopped. Even when we are separated, we quite often talk several times per day.”
The pair traded contact details, and when Jess returned to Taupō, they watched the town’s annual Ironman race, went out for beer and ignited a long-distance relationship. Nine months after they met, he proposed on bent knee at a lighthouse in Germany.
The pair married twice – once in each country – and Jess is now a New Zealand resident and an integral part of the business. As well as managing the marketing and administrative work, she has adapted to marine electrical and mechanical tasks with ease, and has also taken the helm of the finances. “She’s a much better business person than I am,” he says. “Jess is a good saver, and she handles all the bookwork.”
By mid-2019, demand was so strong and projections so good that the couple bought a second, much larger yacht and set about restoring it. Kindred Spirit is a 45-year-old New Zealand-built vessel that has sailed the Pacific and spent a decade as a home for a family of four.
“It’s fast, it’s smooth, it loves the rough weather. It’s dry, and there’s so much room down below. Whereas Fearless is a pirate ship, we wanted Kindred to be a lot more luxurious.”
By the time the handsome wooden yacht had been rewired, replumbed, painted, lacquered and readied for passengers, estimated costs had tripled and months had flown by. And a new threat was on the horizon – within weeks of the boat’s essential paperwork arriving, New Zealand had its first known case of Covid-19 and the international tourism boom was on pause. To pay the bills, Dave spent last winter driving logging trucks while Jess bagged firewood in a local sawmill.
Since then, they’ve had to replace Kindred’s engine twice and, in late December, Fearless was scorched by a marina fire that destroyed two neighbouring boats.
In January, Jess returned to her old job in Germany to help meet their boat payments and also to pay for fertility treatment so they can start a family. In the meantime, Dave is focused on showing New Zealand travellers the lake he adores, while hoping for plain sailing and fair winds ahead.
“We’ve already got through so much, we will get through this as well,” he says.
“People ask, ‘How does he work seven days a week?’ But I never get sick of it. Just yesterday, it was blowing 25 or 30 knots so I went out in the middle of the lake on my own for a sail. I just love it. And one of these days, I hope Jess and I will be out there with our children.”
The lowdown
As well as private charters, Taupō Sailing Adventures offers three adventures on Lake Taupō aboard Kindred Spirit, each taking in the Ngātoroirangi Mine Bay Māori rock carvings. There’s a morning trip, an afternoon Taste of Taupō tour, and a sunset excursion. Each experience takes 2.5 hours.