#42 - Alistair Leaper: Calm Practical Intelligence at Sea

In this episode, Sam Bell speaks with long-time friend Alistair Leaper about sailing, seamanship, trust, calm judgement, and the practical intelligence needed to keep boats and crews moving through changing conditions.

Alistair has spent much of his life around boats, engines, crews, long-haul sailing and ocean racing, including many Sydney to Hobart races. Now based in Mallorca, he works in the world of large yachts, where preparation, adaptability, mechanical understanding, crew dynamics and first-principles thinking all matter.

This is a conversation about the intelligence that shows up at sea: reading people quickly, staying calm under pressure, adapting to the environment, fixing what can be fixed, and knowing when to ask.

This episode explores:
• What sailing gives Alistair, from bay racing to ocean crossings
• Heavy weather sailing, challenge, and staying calm when conditions change
• Trust, responsibility, and quick judgement within a crew
• Leadership that does not need a title
• Conflict resolution, perspective-taking, and moving through tension
• Finding parts, solving problems, and using networks at sea
• Old-school mechanical grounding in a highly technological world
• Repair culture, practical skill, and why “there’s no such thing as a silly question”

Guest links:
• Alistair Leaper: https://www.facebook.com/alistair.leaper

Chapters:
00:02 Sam introduces Alistair Leaper
01:45 What sailing gives Alistair
03:13 Heavy weather, trust, and judgement at sea
05:55 Calm leadership without needing the title
08:52 Seeing both sides and resolving tension
15:05 Planning, sourcing, and adapting offshore
16:30 Technology, paper manuals, and first principles
18:47 Repair culture and making things work
20:45 “If you don’t know, ask”
21:25 Sam’s reflection and thanks

Explore further:
Book a Lab: https://naturalgenius.com.au
Learn more about Sam: https://samanthabell.com.au
Subscribe to hear future episodes.

Credits:
Hosted by Samantha (Sam) Bell in Peregian Beach and Mallorca, 15 February, 2026
Produced at the Peregian Beach, Sunshine Motorway, Violet Town and Kiama offices, 15 February - 9 May, 2026

Natural Genius Podcast https://naturalgenius.com.au

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Net Equogenious Podcast. We're here to help you tap into your Netogeneous guy. I realized recently that Alex DeLieber, otherwise known as Path, is my oldest friend. I have known him since we used to sail together as kids. He is such a good fan and he's always up for a bit of mischief. He's also incredibly wise at all things engine boats. And he currently lives in Mallorca and works on one of the most impressive boats in the world. I can just imagine him tinkering in the bowels of that boat, making everything happen, and sometimes away at sea for many days and weeks not knowing when next he might be having a break. He has incredible resilience. He is jolly good fun. Here is Alistair Leeper, otherwise known as Puff. Alistair Leeper, otherwise known as Puff. Welcome to the Natural Genius Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Oh my God. So formal, mate. Especially since I we've known each other since we were mischievous teenagers. So uh this feels very formal for our friendship. Just last week. Yep. Just last week, exactly. Knowing that you are an amazingly competent engineer and yachty for many Sydney the Hobarts and other races around the world and long haul sailing trips. Tell me what you love about it, Puff.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

I think the one of the biggest things is once you are on the water and you're sailing, everything else that on land is insignificant, you're there, you're either if you're on your own, you're on your own sailing, or if you're with a bunch of other people, you're still you you disconnect from the land a bit, whether that be just on a little short race or on a long haul race. Disconnecting from the land and being being on the water is just a different sensation. Obviously, not everyone's been sailing and will be able to feel it. Certainly a sailing just locally around the bay or something like that versus out in the ocean is a big difference. A feeling of being relaxed to me. It's a it's it's it's a relaxing thing. It might some people you know can be a bit get a bit tense when they go sailing or um and so forth, even you know, bad weather and that it to me is I don't get apprehensive about it. I I tend to embrace it, um, enjoy enjoy doing it every time. It's just one of those things. It's nature's nature's giving you something to to be in, enjoy the moment, whether it be no wind to a complete storm where you can't see. That for me is uh just an amazing thing that you can be in all of those. And in between no wind and a massive storm, you've got beautiful sailing at all times. I think that's just an amazing thing to be able to experience.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Why do you love the really wild weather sailing so much?

SPEAKER_01 3:13

The heavy weather sailing, uh, it's a challenge, it challenges you. You actually have to think about what you're doing. There's also, you know, on longer races, you're you go off watch, you're putting your trust into other people. It's keeping your brain going. You're constantly thinking about things, what where you're going, what you're doing. People say there's it's all safety, safety, safety. But if you're thinking that if that's just the way you try to sail normally, then it's not not uh something you really think about, it's something you just act upon and you do naturally. So it's it's you need need it need a challenge to keep your brain moving and and just enjoy enjoy yourself.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

I think you also were alluding to trust between the people that you're on a crew with. Tell me more.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

You can go to sea with people who you do and don't know. You certainly make a a very quick judgmental call on people's abilities as well. So you manage to make a make a very quick decision very early on of people's abilities, so you know sort of pick their strengths and their weaknesses. Yeah, people can tell you they're strong at doing something, and you can prickly you can quickly judge whether that's true or not. Some people might be very quiet that say that they can do stuff, um but when you've your your trust in them is probably a little bit weaker because you can't you haven't seen it. When you see someone's strengths come out, it's great. It's good to be able to put trust in other people. In doing that, you create a a friendship in a different way with people, I think. A friendship's created on trust, not just on meeting people or something like that. You know, when you're sailing, you're you're actually putting your trust in these people as well.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Oh mate, I'm so impressed that you just alluded to the fact that you can do that really quickly. How do you do that?

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Um, once you become confident in something you do, you then look at what they're doing and you can make a pretty quick pretty quick judgmental call on uh on people's abilities. I suppose it probably comes back down to the old days of school sports and you know picking your team.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

I reckon you might have a real natural ability to being able to assess people's experience. Tell us some stories about you what you've learnt from being at sea.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

I've just told you about how you put your trust in people, but trust no one. In the sense of always be a little bit cautious that the people you're with might be having a bad time or making a bad uh bad move. That comes from a a longer term sort of thing. On a boat, safety's everyone's job and keeping the boat going is technically everyone's job. On a big boat, it does fall down to a couple of people's responsibility to make sure that happens. It's good to be able to trust people, but you could also trust but don't trust. Not in a bad way. Be wary, I think is the thing.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

I wonder if what you're talking about is leadership. You take responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Yeah, even if you're not the even if say you you're not the captain of the vessel, have some leadership for your area. At some point in time you're in charge of the boat, the captain's got to sleep, so he also has to be able to put his trust in the people around him. That's a that's a big thing to be able to um do the same for yourself. You know, yes, I can trust my captain a hundred percent, but always not questioning, but always just watching what's happening. And you learn from that as well. His you learn from his decisions. You watch watch him make a decision and you go, why did he do that? Always question it. And there's nothing wrong with questioning it. It's also it's also good to be questioned yourself. Like you know, people question things I do, and they go, Okay, why are you questioning it? What is my decision right? Yes or no.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

How do you stay peaceful and restful with that always on being aware? And also how do you do that in a respectful way to your co-workers? You've got a very facilitative style, mate.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

I'm not a snappy person in that sense, so I'm very very calm and collected. It's all great to jump and say something straight away, but I think and taking a little bit of time to analyse and process and when the opportunity's right, if it's not snap making decisions, you know, instantaneous and you've got time to think about it is a lot better. Some people can be very off the cuff straight away, bang, this is what you should do, bang, bang, and not think about it, whether it be a decision on navigation, a decision on fixing something or how to fix something. Just literally I think it comes down to just analysing each situation separately. Not every situation has the same requirement to act in the same ways. So I'm pretty good at sitting back and analysing things nowadays and most of the time watching what's going on beforehand, knowing when to step in and voice if you've got concerns, to voice concerns, even act and do something that is might not be in your normal role. Knowing when to do that, I think is the time when you're not you don't cross over into other people's paths and cause problems. Some people might see it differently at times when they when you do it, but in yachting quite a lot of the time we'll sit down after something happens and someone's been upset or tensions are high or something, we we can we'll sit down and analyse things a little bit and talk about it. That comes from a leadership side from from the captain as well. Yeah, if we had a problem he didn't and he didn't see it, I'd I'd bring it up with him and say, let's have a talk about it afterwards and then maybe have a group chat as well and analyse what happened, break it down and see how we can improve ourselves or what points need to be addressed to continue doing what we do.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

I wonder if what you were just talking about with jumping in to have group conversations and to sort tension out. I wonder if that's part of how you can be at sea for an endless amount of time when you don't know when you're gonna have your next uh break or when you're next gonna go to shore. I wonder if those conversations and being alert to when um things feel intense and sorting them through, whether that helps.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

I I sort of look back and I think there was a a defining moment for me in the way I looked at things. Or to two, I should say two. One was uh when I worked at uh Rolls Royce Bentley, we had a a customer, a lawyer, a very old guy, funny, very funny old man. Everyone was scared of him. He had this aura around him of being not dangerous, but just a person who was vicious in a way. And just one day I had to go and pick his car up and he said, No, come with me, we're going to a coffee shop to sit down. Oh, but and he was like, Don't worry about the the guy in the office who's going to complain about your time, I'll deal with him. So we went and sat and had a coffee while we're waiting for his car to arrive, and he was very open sort of person, and he had a letter. Uh, it was a legal letter with a high-profile Melbourne case at the time, so technically he probably shouldn't have been showing you. I think he picked his audience, and he just basically sat with a red pen going through this legal document, which was a letter of demand of some sort, and dissect and dissecting it with me, just talking through having a coffee and talking about car and dissecting this letter at the same time. And then the way the way that he dissected the letter, actually, I was quite impressed by how he did it. And his big thing that I took from that was remove yourself from your side and put yourself on the other person's side, and pretend you've written the letter that's been sent to you, and he said that it makes it very easy for you to stand in between the two of you and understand both sides. And that was a sort of a point where I started to realize, yeah, okay, if you you've got an argument, if you're in an argument, you've got your side, you're 100% fighting for what you want. Then the other person's gonna fire back, and you uh you usually go on the offensive when you're in an argument or something or a dispute. Yeah, so it sort of started to look at things differently, and I applied that in everyday life. That went along into um when I started working for the insurance company, I went and did a conflict conflict resolution course, and that just stood true again. The the the way the course was delivered was really good. Again, just reinforced how I'd been thinking about it and other other tools to work around, be a people manager. That's so impressive.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

I wonder also, mate, whether you just always had these sort of spidey senses, like alertness around people's emotions and to be able to sense how to create teams working harmoniously.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Not always working harmoniously, that requires a lot of attention. Yachts are a funny environment and you have a mix of people from quite a lot of walks of life and bring brings people together that yeah, normally in a normal situation wouldn't be together, you know, they probably wouldn't give each other the time of day. But then they start to work together and create a a working bond. Not always perfect, but you know you have to make it work somehow. Again, it's it's an indust this industry is something that some people are cut out for, some people aren't. Some people last you know, a long, long time, and some people end up being one year, one one season maybe, and then say, no, I don't want to do it anymore. They they see it on TV and they go, Oh, this is oh, look at that, that's amazing. I'm gonna go and do that. I'm gonna work on a boat overseas, uh, and then the reality kicks in of how much work is involved. And yes, you are in beautiful places, but you're working, you're not actually enjoying it like the guests do on the boat. You're you're you're an employee, you're not a guest. So it it's different. If you're happy to enjoy it as you go, yeah, for me, it's a different work environment. You walk out the door and you're not staring at another building, you're staring out into the ocean, or you might be somewhere on the Amalfi coast or who knows where, you know, any anywhere in the world, somewhere in the Caribbean. And also, you've got to be able to adapt to your environment, both people and places as well. So, you know, you might be in the Caribbean, you say, Oh, the guest wants X, and you're like, uh, they don't have this on this side of the world. Do we have it on the boat, or where can we get it? And sometimes some guests are like that. You have to, where the boats I've been on have always been privately owned, so it's not a problem because you ask them what they want before you start. Whereas charter boats is can be a bit different and demanding, where anything they want they just have to pay for. Yeah, working with people can be can be tricky. Having that conflict resolution sort of thought in my head, it works for me. It doesn't it won't always work um because some people will be in an argument, will never see both sides of an argument, even if you try to explain it to them. They're on their on their their own path. And that's a matter of being able to understand that's what people are like. For me, I can that makes it easy for me to get over things, but you know, when you've got a conflict or a disagreement, very easy for me to understand that that's that's their point. I've got my point, and I move on. It's just a matter of understanding that you don't see something being fixed because you you read that other person, you read read their their side of it, or what you um what you believe to be their side, and you just move on. Being like that is is uh is one of the keys of don't carry the grudge. If you carry the grudge, you put yourself in a in a bad place, and very easy to just pop out the door onto deck and go, oh look, look where I am. Do you get up to enough mischief on the boats? Uh occasionally, yeah. Uh on the on the boat you've got to pick your moments. It's not normally just one person having a go, it's just a little bit of group mentality.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

What goes on to her stays on to her.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

That's right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

And I've got to ask you also, you were talking before about charter boats and what came to mind was the supply chain. And I remember one time you're in the Caribbean somewhere and you needed something, and you were describing how you talked to different other boats in the area and asked them if they had it. It sounded like there was such a great community of the boats locally. I don't know how you can could communicate with them, but then you'd ask them and then you'd ask at shore, and then you it was like a two or threefold process to to find this object. But tell me more about that.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Yeah, that's that's the adapting to the environment side of things. We try and plan for most scenarios of things that we will need, whether it be mechanical or things for the guests. Normally we ask them what they want, find out what the guests want early on or what things we need on the boat, we tend to plan for that as much as we can. You don't want to say worst-case scenario, but you uh planning ahead gives you a good option. But if when you hit a situation where something unexpected comes up and you need to find a part, for example, like that example you're saying, it's a matter of using things like social media is a good one. Contacting people on Facebook, there's groups for different areas of the world, crew groups, uh, engineers group, you tell you you're trying to find something, or you've got a problem with a particular brand or something you've not dealt with, and people might say, Yeah, I've got that and I've had this problem. Good little uh resource. Sort of Facebook and WhatsApp groups, they're the main places we that we communicate. The network of people and the friendships certainly you know, someone always knows somebody for something.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

And do you have to be adaptable with technology as well? Like in one part of the world, I know that Asia I've used WhatsApp a lot lot more. Do you swap between platforms or do you find that WhatsApp and Facebook are generally pretty good? You go-tos?

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Yeah, WhatsApp, WhatsApp's the biggest Europe, Europe for WhatsApp or email is the the two biggest platforms I use at the moment. I'm not a doomsdayer as such with the whole technology things, but I can certainly see some bits and pieces that the the modern technology, which is supposed to be fantastic, fail people who are relying on it. And that comes down to having knowledge about some s certain things, like you know, in-depth technical knowledge about something, and then someone coming along and using AI to get an answer, and AI giving the answer incorrectly because 30 other people have given the answer incorrectly, so all of a sudden it becomes unreliable for certain things. I've seen that a few times. It's certainly a a wake-up to old school paper manuals, in a way, is what I say. Yeah, nothing beats nothing beats the piece of paper that that was that was written originally about something because it was very often, it wasn't very often that it was wrong.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

That's also an advantage to you and your captain that you get along well with, and the boat that you're on at the moment, you've known it for a long time and you've built certain aspects of it, and you can go back to first principles if you need to, if there's something that goes wrong when you're out from shore.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Exactly, yeah. And that's part of our our ethos is when we're you know designing systems like that, we're not solely relying on something or someone else to do the whole the whole design. We we have input into it so that we understand the idiosyncrasies of a system and the you know the core of the system, how it works. And we're definitely looking at every time we make a decision on just buying something, is this the right thing? Is it what happens if this fails? Is this fit for purpose? What does it do for us? You know, definitely uh a big part of our our thing. So yeah, we we don't not just relying on technology to to get us from A to B. We still rely on our own brains driving us.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Yeah. And do you think that that was that's also been so advantageous for you because you were a mechanic, a car mechanic as well. So you can actually think through the design possibly a bit more holistically than a person who's been an engineer on a boat all their career?

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Yeah, oh I think so. Back in the day of my my being a mechanic, there weren't any computers to plug in. Well, there were there were, but initially there weren't any plug-in computers on the first the first cars I was working on the first few years of my my job. You didn't have a diagnostic computer to work with. We still had cars coming with carburetors and all the you know the old basic systems with no computer running the car. The most advanced thing in the car was a radio. So I think you know, having having that solid mechanical background, fit you know, physical solid mechanical background, and seeing the implementation of technology over the years has been uh certainly a good grounding to be able to fix something one way or another. And being able to do that is a is a big thing. It can get you out of trouble in a lot of in a lot of ways, say thinking outside the circle. Nowadays, a lot of people are like, oh no, it can't be fixed. It's like I've had this attitude of why can't it be fixed? Like what what's stopping it from being fixed? We just enjoy making things work that people say can't be fixed.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

What's the thing that you're most like to fix there, mate?

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Anything if it's broke, fix it. Um don't don't be, you know, because uh it is such a throwaway society at the moment. There's so many things that can be fixed. Unfortunately, things nowadays aren't as good as they used to be, um, quality-wise. That stops a little bit of it, but just just looking at the house, looking at a window frame, and thinking, okay, the window frame dies. What happens nowadays is people don't try to fix it themselves, they just call the company in to replace the whole window. There's none of that. Spend the time, a little bit of time and you know, effort to try and to do something. We're we're losing that massive loss of skill.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

I mean, I've loved seeing that with Patagonia. Half like seeing how they have brought back repairs, got it an attractive quality to get to do a repair. It's nice to see that come back. It's nice to see reuse. What do you often say to newcomers to the boat?

SPEAKER_01 20:45

But I I do tell people if you don't know, ask. On a boat when we're going, there's there's no such thing as a silly question. A silly question is is being asked because someone doesn't know for a reason something. And it might be a different question for different people. So yeah, on a on a boat, there's no such thing as a silly question because uh it's just someone doesn't know something. So that's my sort of a bit of a a bit of an ethos I wrap. I can tell you ten times, it's obviously not sinking in. So I'm either telling you in a way that's not working. That's probably the probably one of the big things for me on the boat is yeah, if someone doesn't know they'll and they're asking a question, you're you're asking a question, good. Better better to ask than to to shut up and be quiet.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

So what a bonus for me. I still can't believe that you said yes to having this conversation and also Johnny Crimes. I think he helped to convince you. You are one of my dear friends that over the years I've been able to observe the different chapters and different experiences of life, the ups and the downs. It's such a pleasure in life to be able to see friends get into a position of skill. And in this conversation, it's just great to hear your skills and your experience shared.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Uh it was great to great to do it. I was apprehensive at first. Not not the sort of person who normally Talks, this sort of stuff being recorded. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

You've just done so well. I so appreciate it. So many people don't know much about the uh environment in which you work, so here we are.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

Thank you, my friend. I think it's time to go to a Mallorcan market with your little one that's I think it is. Yeah, we can do that. Thanks for listening to the Natural Genius podcast. Please share this with anyone who came to mind and visit us at naturalgenius.com.au. Thanks so much.