Ferdi Darley has spent almost his whole career working on wooden ships.
That includes a decade sailing square riggers – or tall ships – and another 34 years plying the shipwright trade.
A tenant at Seaworks since 2009, Ferdi runs his own shipwright business, employing seven staff. But his working life has not always been on wooden boats.
Born in Adelaide, Ferdi worked on the Moomba gas and oil fields in Western Australia after leaving school. He later studied hospitality and tourism in Fremantle and worked in that industry for a year. But a decision to take a two-year “gap year” found him head down a completely different career path: sailing the high seas on square riggers around the world, sometimes for months at a time.
And there were some fascinating ships he sailed on, including refurbished Dutch vessels, the Anna Kristina and Anna Rosa, built in the late 1800s. Another two vessels were those converted to look like the Santa Maria and Pinta – Christopher Columbus’ vessels – for the Ridley Scott movie “1492: Conquest of Paradise”. Ferdi was part of the crew that delivered the vessels to Costa Rica for filming in 1992.
It was on that voyage that he met English adventurer Wendy Potter. After 10 years and 100,000 nautical miles of sailing on square riggers, Ferdi decided he needed to get a land-based job. He and Wendy returned to England, where they married.
Ferdi took up a shipwright and blacksmithing apprenticeship in the Gloucester Docks with Danish owner Tommy Nielson. He later got a job with the Square Sail Shipyard in Bristol, which owned three square riggers.
While at the shipyard, Ferdi wrote course material for the Falmouth Maritime College in England. The one-year course allowed people to learn to sail on square riggers, with a requirement to clock up 5,000 sea miles. Students also had to learn about ship maintenance, hospitality and tourism – all skills Ferdi developed over two decades.
In 2001, Ferdi returned to Australia with Wendy and sons Rupert and Toban.
“We settled in Melbourne because I got a job to put the officers’ accommodation and the poop deck back on the Polly Woodside. That was a job funded by the National Trust,” he said.
“After that, I started my own shipwright business. I now have seven staff at the moment. My son Rupert works in the business and Toban began an apprenticeship but now works as a chippy for a carpentry business.”
Ferdi’s work is varying, and not solely working with timber. “We put timber decks on fiberglass boats and build fiberglass boats. We developed the fibreglass fittings for the exterior of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne and the Orbis building in Albert Park,” Ferdi said.
“We have been involved in restoring the Alma Doepel in Docklands. It’s one of the biggest projects I have worked on. I have two full-time staff working on the Alma and I am there three days a week. I work with the volunteers to teach them how to restore the ship.”
Ferdi said the continuation of the shipwright trade was very important. And Seaworks lends itself as the perfect base.
“From a boating point of view, there are very few places in Australia that offer facilities like Seaworks. I was lucky enough to get a shed and having a slipway is an advantage. At the moment, I have got the oldest known sailing yacht in Australia on the slipway: the Zephyr,” he said.
“The public can watch the rebuild of the Zephyr. We are looking for Huon pine for the rebuild but it is almost impossible to get. We are hopeful to put the gaff rigged vessel back in the water and develop an educational sailing operation centred on the Zephyr.
“Seaworks is a place that is very much irreplaceable for this kind of work. I like to be here because of the ambience of the place but also because it allows us to show what trade vessels are about.”
