Neil Hockaday
“I didn’t learn to sail until my wife Claire and I moved to South Devon in 1997,” Dart Harbour Board Chairman Neil Hockaday tells me. “We met the yacht master at the Britannia Royal Naval College, Rob Berry and he and his wife took us under their wing. We bought a Moody 27 yacht together and sailed with them very happily for two years. After that we decided we liked it so much we wanted to buy our own and now have a 40-foot Malo. After ten years we still love that yacht and we’ve just got back from a trip to Guernsey and the French coast!”
Born in North West London, Neil joined the Midland Bank early in his career and never looked back.
“I spent 30 years with first the Midland and later with HSBC,” he said. “I was very lucky to travel a lot with my job and really enjoyed it.”
Neil seems to have had a rather ‘jet set’ lifestyle whilst working for the Bank.
“I lived in Jersey for a few years, then France, opened operations for a new branch in New York, living there for five years and ended up running the credit card division in Hong Kong, with more than a million customers and 600 staff. After Hong Kong was handed back to the Chinese I left the bank and became finance officer for a pharmaceutical firm that was just starting up in Bristol, before retiring to South Devon.
“During my career I’ve had a variety of roles, often involving corporate and investment banking and general management. I’ve always been comfortable working in finance and I always say I can read a balance sheet easier than I can read a book! I’ve worked in lots of different sizes of organisation within the bank – I took the New York branch from just me to more than 125 in five years. I’ve also been an operational manager and was in charge of bringing the credit analysis departments of Midland and HSBC together, which was not a simple project! I love seeing what makes an organization tick and helping to make it work more efficiently.”
Neil and Claire, who have now been married for 42 years and have two children and four grandchildren, bought a farmhouse in Churston Ferrers which had a number of derelict barns on it, and converted them into holiday lets.
The couple discovered a deep and abiding love of the area and the river itself.
“Through our newly discovered love of sailing we found ourselves connected to a lot of people who became friends and we became part of the community. The river is truly a beautiful and delightful environment. Every day I am here, I walk to Greenway and look down at it. I have come to love it and want to protect it and see it preserved. This led me to join the Harbour Board.”
Seeing an advert for Dart Harbour board members, Neil took on the volunteer role on the board and in thirteen years has become first its finance expert and now its Chairman.
It is a role that demands diplomacy, tact and strength of character – mainly due to the conflicting interests that the harbour authority has to juggle.
“I no longer have a yacht on the river, as I don’t think it is right for me to have a financial connection to the harbour. I need to be completely objective,” he said. “As a board, we never pat ourselves on the back and say ‘well done’ - we are always trying to make things better. We concentrate our work on balancing the competing demands of different river users. It needs the judgment of Solomon sometimes!
“It is very satisfying, it’s a challenge and it’s always a learning experience. I’m very proud of the fact that we have been looking at long-term plans for maintenance, training and health and safety. We are one of the few ports nationally to comply with the Port Marine Safety Code as it was introduced. Our strategy on maintenance resulted in not one mooring being lost during the very extreme storms this winter – again one of a very few nationwide in that position.
“We are just custodians of the Dart and if we leave it as beautiful, as admired and as well regarded as when we took on that responsibility then we have done our job well.“
First Published July 2014 By The Dart