He Tangata: Matt Horder of Pure Cruise

Matt Horder, Chief Skipper of Pure Cruise. Photo / Supplied

Elisabeth Easther talks to the chief skipper of Pure Cruise, Lake Rotoiti.

As a kid, I just loved the whole adventure of camping in the dunes, kayaking, surfing, exploring headlands with the dog and getting too much sun. Mum and Dad were really awesome at getting four of us out on a limited budget. I grew up in a little village north of Oxford called Mollington. For holidays we were bundled into a van and trundled to east coast beaches or to Wales.

Travelling through Australia, I remember hitching in Tasmania and this guy turned up in an old Landover with a huge sign on the roof saying EXPLOSIVES. I jumped in, and we were chatting away and he said, "yes, I've got a boot full of dynamite". We were bouncing down this bumpy road, and through the back window I saw all these wooden boxes full of explosives. I worried that we were going to blow up but the man was super-interesting and I learnt that dynamite needs to be detonated with a fuse and it's nitroglycerine that doesn't like to jump around.

Pure Cruise, luxury yacht tour operator.

There's a river in Ethiopia called The Omo and it's stunning. The first half is mainly white water in and the canyons are massive. Two years running I guided a commercial 21-day trip on it and the first season was perfect. But the second year, the rainy season never stopped. We were flying down the river, but when we got to the takeout, the river was 20 or 30 feet higher than it should've been at that time of year. The trucks couldn't pick us up and there was no radio communication so I walked out with a Mursi tribesman while the rest of the group camped on the river, waiting for word.

It was a two-and-a-half day walk to the local mission station and I was fully sick by the time we got there, a bit of malaria. I messaged head office in London and they were trying to organise trucks when we learnt that five major bridges had been washed away. My guide went back to the group and told them to raft 250km downstream to an old hunters' lodge where there was an airstrip, and the Ethiopian military sent a great Russian cargo helicopter to get everyone out. Some of them were irate they got out 10 days later than they'd expected, but we kept them safe and fed. If you don't want to take those risks, book a package holiday to the Costa del Sol.

Sailing with friends on a 58ft yacht through the Pacific, because it's big open ocean, you try to connect with other boats for company. Before we left Panama, as we waited to move through the canal, we made friends with another boat and decided to keep in touch. Every evening about 4 or 5 o'clock we'd have a radio chinwag, we even started a game of Trivial Pursuit. One evening we were in the middle of nowhere, yet quite close to this other vessel, which is unusual. Then a third vessel pulled up a mayday. They said they were in a 30-footer, and they were sinking. The weather wasn't too harsh, but it was turning dark, and we arranged to meet the vessel at dawn at a certain location, but our friends wanted us to go together for a bit of security.

When we got there, we found this older couple from Sardinia, and they were obviously sailing on a shoestring. There was lots of swell, so we couldn't bring the boats side on as the masts would clash and we'd kill each other. So I was put in a dinghy and cast adrift and I jumped on their boat. When I got aboard, I saw their floorboards were all up, their keel was flexing and water was pouring in. For three days they'd been in full wet-weather gear up top in the cockpit, because they were too scared to go below in case the keel snapped off and the boat turned upside down. It was Good Friday, they'd been fearing for their lives and their radio had no range. They were between the Galapagos and Marquesas Islands, 1500 nautical miles from anywhere; they were so lucky we came by. We got them off but we had to scuttle the boat and the man and his wife watched their boat disappear beneath the waves.

Pure Cruise, luxury sailing charter, on Lake Rotoiti.

I first came to New Zealand as a backpacker, and summer after summer I'd come here to teach kayaking and then rafting. I enjoyed everything about New Zealand, the beaches, the rivers, the mountains, so I was always trying to find ways to come back. When it was time to settle down, my partner Annie and I cruised around for a summer to see if we could live here. We decided to launch a luxury sailing business on Lake Rotoiti, providing an exclusive experience. And while we started during the GFC — not the best time to start a luxury tourism experience — we survived. Tourism is booming again and we're doing really well.

Further information: purecruise.co.nz