Westhaven advocate and offshore veteran dies

by Sail-World on 31 May 2006 One of the stalwarts of the Westhaven waterfront passed away earlier this week.

Jack ('Smutsy') Smith died on Monday morning. He was in his eighties.

The only Gold Badge Life member of the Victoria Cruising Club, Jack was the mainstay of the club after reviving it over 20 years ago.

However Jack did more than just look after the Victoria CC interests, he was the driving force behind all the Westhaven clubs’ arm wrestles with the bureaucracy to keep Westhaven in public ownership.

Past Commodore of the Ponsonby Cruising Club, Ron Copeland remembers Jack 'as a very generous guy to whom a lot of people owe a great deal of gratitude'.

Always working closely with the PCC, Jack financed and put two young sailors per year through the PCC junior sailing program. 'He was always the first to pull his chequebook out if there was money required for sails or gear, or whatever was required', added Copeland.

'He put enormous time and effort into putting Westhaven into public ownership'

In his racing days, Jack was involved in offshore and harbour racing, crewing aboard Fidelis, Satanita, and Buccaneer. He did many trans-Tasman crossings. In 1967/68 Jack was part of the crew of Satanita which was selected in the three boat team to contest the Southern Cross Cup (the downunder version of the Admirals Cup), the other two boats in the team were Rainbow II (Chris Bouzaid) and Castanet (Lyn Carmichael).

A very loyal and dear friend to the Hooper family, Jack sailed and assisted with the maintenance on the K-class Sapphire and Corinthian, both owned by Russ Hooper.

His funeral is on Friday.