RNZN Commander Walter Willis met Englishwoman and WREN Doreen Wilson in Ceylon [Sri Lanka] during WWII and married her in the UK. After the war, the Willis family shifted to New Zealand, where Simon Willis was born in 1950 in a small Navy Maternity Hospital at Narrow Neck Beach, now long gone.
“Bit disappointed there’s not a plaque there,” Willis chuckled. After stints in the UK and Wellington, the Willis family moved to Auckland in 1963. Attracted to sailing from an early age, Willis’ first boat was a one-off 2.1m scaled-down version of an OK Dinghy.
“In hindsight, that forced me to do my own thing. If I’d entered the P Class scene, I might have gone down a different path.”
His first keeler was equally non-mainstream, a 4.2m Frank Blom design named Michelle, which he raced and cruised for a few years with the Devonport Yacht Club. DYC membership led to crewing opportunities on keelers such as Calypso, Princess, Persephone, Outlaw II and Strider, the latter two owned by boatbuilder/designer Sandy Jones.
Willis went to Auckland University to study geography and politics, but sailing was always his passion. In 1971 he in the Whangarei to Noumea race and helped deliver the Raven from Auckland to Noumea the following year.
