“Talking Sailing From My Archives. More on Voortrekker & Bruce Dalling

by Richard Crockett

I agree fully with the comments Frans Loots made yesterday regarding just how big the Voortrekker OSTAR project was due to the total support of South African business and especially Dr. Anton Rupert, plus of course the SA Navy.

I do believe that a project of this magnitude also requires complete impartiality from those managing it, and in this case those people selected Bruce Dalling as skipper by voting with their heads and not their hearts. He was the right man for the job, and although he was not first across the line in the OSTAR, he was declared the overall winner on handicap.

Dalling received worldwide recognition for his OSTAR exploits, and at home won many an award too, as two of the newspaper cuttings shared today will show. But, being a singlehanded sailor is never easy, as one of the reports shows.

I have tons of material on Dalling and Voortrekker, enough to write a book, yet I know that with all that I have I am only scratching the surface.

So as always, I will beat the drum which led me to publish, for several years now, snippets of historical sailing material I have. Daily, historical material is dumped in the trash and on landfill sites purely because those who have it don’t recognise the value of the scrap books, newspaper cuttings and photos they have in their possession from loved ones long deceased. And not knowing what to do with it, or to whom to pass it, they simply ditch it.

I pledge to scan and digitise all sailing related material passed to me, and save it in my archives for use in this Blog and for historical purposes in the future. I also pledge to give the donor a copy of the digitised material to keep for their own use.

If you have old sailing related material you don’t want to keep any longer, please contact me editor@sailing.co.za – and let me preserve it.

These are the three cuttings I can share today:

Sad Dalling Relieves His Lone Trip:  1968 08 02 – Voortrekker 1 & Dalling – Voortrekker 1 & Dalling – 876 – OCR

Bruce – and A Green Blazer in A Boot:  1968 08 02 – Voortrekker 1 & Dalling – stitched final – 877 – OCR

Bruce Dalling – SA Sportsman Van 1968:  1968 08 02 – Voortrekker 1 & Dalling – 000015 – OCR

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