SABBEX Executive Head, Vanessa Davidson is moving on
There’s a little-known story about Vanessa Davidson that best explains how she ended up at the helm of the boating industry. She was once ordered to fling herself out of a large ski-craft, into the freezing Atlantic.
She did it several times in a row, and not because there was a fire onboard or any need to escape; she was told it was for her own good – to toughen her up for sea rescue duty with the NSRI.
“It was my first trial and we were out on an old Ace Craft with high gunnels,” she chuckles. “I was told to jump over the edge and climb back over those gunnels. I really had to prove myself physically.”
The coxswain responsible has since apologised to Vanessa, but in one respect he did us all a favour: Vanessa not only became a stalwart NSRI member, she went on to champion the entire boating industry.
What the coxswain didn’t know – or maybe he did – is that people like Vanessa don’t mind being chucked in the deep end, they thrive off it.
Fast forward twenty-odd years and I’m talking to Vanessa about her exit as SABBEX executive manager. Since scrambling over the gunnels of the NSRI Bakoven rescue craft she has proved much more than her physical stamina. She has served in several executive positions across the industry, and is currently two years into a five year stint as chairperson of the International Marine Certification Institute. She has also had her hand firmly on the tiller of the boatbuilding industry throughout a tumultuous time.
Did it all start with the NSRI?
It goes back a bit further than that, she explains, casting her mind back to her childhood in Zimbabwe where she spent some holidays in a cabin on Lake Chivero. Her family may not have been avid boaters, but growing up in Zimbabwe in the 1970s / 80s was not for the fainthearted. Uprooting and moving to South Africa required courage too, and helps explain why Vanessa is not easily intimidated, whether at Bakoven or in the boardroom. Resilience is a big part of her life story.
The same is true of her early professional career in education where she was heavily involved in adult education and community arts projects. Says Vanessa: “I oversaw visual and performing arts education, mostly for township youth, and was involved in the NGO development world for quite a while.”
With hindsight it was also good preparation for skills development in the maritime sector.
But having established herself in education Vanessa did what many dream of doing but never quite accomplish: she gave it all up and went sailing. Inspired possibly by her triumph over the Bakoven coxswain, she and her partner snapped up a chance to help deliver a Voyage 500 to the far side of the world.
Like most good decisions, it remains largely unexplained: “I resigned to sail across the Atlantic. I watched Table Mountain disappear, and I wondered what on earth I was doing,” says Vanessa, still a little amazed by it all.
Needless to say by the time they got to the Caribbean she was hooked, and spent the next four years running a Voyage 500 in the charter industry. This time it was a genuine ocean baptism, in the deep end of the boating industry. And there was no need to order her back overboard; she jumped willingly.
At the time Vanessa could not have known how valuable this adventure would be. It allowed her an insider view of the charter market that to a large extent underpins the local luxury boat yards. She returned to South Africa with a clear idea of both the product and the end user; along with the rare ability, acquired only in open ocean, of placating nitpicky customers in a confined space.
A perfect training ground for boardroom politics.
Unsurprisingly she gravitated back into the boating industry once back in Cape Town and got involved in the Whisper Boatbuilding Academy for the Deaf. This led to a job managing skills development for the Cape Town Boatbuilding Initiative at the Port’s Elliot Basin. The CTBI project faced headwinds – largely due to the global financial crisis of 2008/09 and partly due to issues around the TNPA lease – but it did serve as a crash course in other key aspects of the maritime economy, not least the regulatory environment. By the time she started her new post, with the Maritime Industry Association of South Africa (MIASA), she had earned her proverbial stripes, with insight into most aspects of the industry. She also had firsthand experience of some industrial pitfalls — such as bureaucratic red tape — and was determined to overcome them. “The growth of MIASA was really important for me,” she explains. “It was also a big jump, from an engagement role into leading a national association.”
Unlike CTBI, with MIASA luck was on her side. Just four months into her new job MIASA hosted the ICOMIA Annual Congress which Vanessa describes as ‘a baptism of fire’. “But it gave me immediate personal introductions and access to industry leaders. Many of those relationships are still there today in my current role at IMCI.”
If the charter industry was her baptism, MIASA was her honorary doctorate in the maritime economy. Vanessa could now leverage her years of networking and hands-on experience to connect role players and get projects moving. Through proactive leadership she helped grow SABBEX membership and entrench its presence. As a consultant she also immersed herself in desktop research, providing the useful backup data for work.
In all of this those who know her well would agree her biggest weapon is her disarming personality. She has a rare ability to suck the bullshit out of a room just by being nice, and straightforward. As such she is literally a breath of fresh air.
Her workaholic tendencies have also benefited the industry at a time when they needed her most – the Covid 19 pandemic. SABBEX’s negotiating a rapid return-to-work by drawing up workplace protocols, at a time when many sectors remained shut down. It allowed local yards to retain some momentum and ultimately be in a position to benefit from the huge upswing in the global luxury boat market – itself a function of the pandemic.
Vanessa says she never tired of interacting with her industry counterparts, nor of visiting the yards. “Yard visits for me are an absolute highlight of the work,” she says. “Seeing the staff and seeing boats and accessories being created and being invited out on demo sails: that really is a highlight. It allows you to interface with people who are passionate about what they are doing.”
“One of the standouts is interfacing between international buyers and local boat builders — where a buyer would view SABBEX as a valid and bona fide institution that can provide the non biased info that they need, and can facilitate intros to companies.”
Another unintended benefit of Vanessa’s dunking into the Atlantic all those years ago was a fruitful relationship with the NSRI. It was under her watch that the NSRI finalised an acquisition programme that sees them purchasing locally built boats and maintaining one of the largest fleets in South Africa. “That has become a big contributor to the economy, so hats off to the NSRI for being a part of that,” she says.
Although her current IMCI role involves more Zoom meetings than onboard greetings, she views her appointment as a sign of progress. For her, now even more than when she worked in education, transformation is much more than a buzzword, both in relation to gender and race. She also sees a welcome growth in opportunities for southern hemisphere countries in a global marketplace historically dominated by Europe and America. “My (IMCI) appointment was around the time Sarah Angel was appointed president of ICOMIA. I think the timing reflects a recognition of women in the industry and a recognition of market opportunities beyond Europe and North America,” reflects Vanessa.
She believes the challenge for South Africa is to affect meaningful transformation at yard ownership level.
As she departs SABBEX (to play a more behind-the-scenes role), passing the executive baton to another dynamic woman, she trains her sights on the massive Saldanha Bay Industrial Development Zone where she is already involved in new port development planning and on the expansion of BlueCape, she founded with Bruce Tedder in 2019.
Expect to see her leaping over the gunnels of another success story in years to come.