July 2021: The Danish newspaper Fyns Amts Avis published five separate articles detailing the pathetic story of the Oceanic Research Institute “fleet”. COURAGE, Earl de Blonville’s ship is sunk and abandoned in Rudkobing and will be destroyed at the expense of Danish taxpayers. Earl has never paid a “red shrimp” in fees since 2013, according to the harbormaster. Earl now claims, laughably, that he sold the COURAGE “a long time ago” to a guy from Rostock, Germany. Earl can’t remember his name and “a long time ago” Earl forgot to inform the harbormaster. Earl has produced no bill of sale. As early as 2017 Earl knew that COURAGE was resting on the bottom. As late as the end of 2019 Earl was still seeking donations to “upgrade” the fleet.
According to the private shipyard in Svendborg where the La Boheme is moldering, nothing has been paid in mooring fees or repairs completed since 2013. The shipyard owner just wants the bills paid and the ship moved. Earl and Jennifer are simply shameless in repeatedly posting pictures of the La Boheme as part of their fundraising, pictures which falsely portrayed the ship in great condition. And they were asking specifically for donations to fix up their own, private, sailboats!
If you don’t read Danish and don’t want a subscription to FAA, contact me for English translations of the articles. rett139@yahoo.com
May 2021: According to the Australian Charities and Not-For-Profits Commission (ACNC) Oceanic Research Institute received $150K in donations in 2019 and 2020. As an Approved Research Institute (ARI) all donated funds must be used for research. Research may be a broad category, but there is no public evidence that ORI has conducted anything that would resemble research. ORI has no employees, their “research vessels” are not seaworthy for service and rotting in Denmark. Their announced campaign to produce the “first” ocean literacy curriculum for Australia consists of a “Coming Soon” webpage which appeared in August 2020 and disappeared in December of 2021.
The ORI Facebook page is largely posts promoting the private business interests of the directors. All this begs the question: “Who are the donors of $150k and how was the money spent?” For instance, the La Boheme has been docked at a private shipyard in Denmark for about 8 years. Who is paying those fees? (We now have the answer, courtesy of the Danish newspaper Fyns Amts Avis… No One is paying those fees, they are unpaid for years.)
April 2021: Earl de Blonville has consistently claimed that none of his friends or professional colleagues have responded to my inquiries or otherwise engaged in discussions about their experiences with Earl. This is wishful thinking on Earl’s part and simply balderdash. Just this month another genuine professional guide and photographer that has known Earl for years and who Earl unsuccessfully tried to snow with grand claims of participation in a Greenland adventure confirmed “I smelled a rat and bailed out.”
September 2020: A brand new contact confirms, “Earl worked 1979 to 1981 as a shop assistant in an outdoor equipment store in Melbourne and did not hold a full-time position at Peregrine Expeditions as his CV implies”. Earl did lead one trip down the Sun Kosi in 1980 for Peregrine and was then dropped as a guide [ed. note: confirmed by Bob Ashford, the owner].
Earl did not lead any trips in 1981 or later for Peregrine and the evidence is his absence from the original Peregrine brochures that list all guides and their experience. So much for the claims that Earl ‘Designed, marketed, researched and led a series of new high-quality adventure packages’ and also ‘set new operational quality standards for industry’. Ashford also confirmed that Earl did NOT lead the first commercial trip down the Sun Kosi River, as Earl has claimed.
Death Threat by Dixie Chicks? Earl claims I made a death threat against him by tweeting a link to a Dixie (now just) Chicks video called Goodbye Earl. The tweet wasn’t addressed to Earl. The video was brought to my attention by one of his ex-girlfriends who was much poorer but wiser for the experience of Earl in her life. It was ironic, dark humor. Earl is apparently still hiding under his couch.
August 2020: Earl has yet ANOTHER anonymous website at Issuu.com to spew his bile. https://issuu.com/KMcampaign is more childish ranting and includes a claim that Prescott College doesn’t exist and I didn’t graduate with a degree in 1975. Ripley and Laura Davenport are also posting the same bile here. Also, I am lying about being the Honorary Consul of Mongolia. Earl should work in the Trump campaign. He has the requisite skill of completely tuning out reality even when it bites him on the ass.
Laura Davenport wrote to Prescott College asking if my degree was real and valid. The answer was a clear, unequivocal YES. Earl got a copy of the confirmation email. So did Jennifer Gidley and Earl’s lawyers. But still, he persists. The new scandal Earl has breathlessly unearthed is how I “exploited Mongolia”. I served as HonCon for 13 years and as the attached note from the Foreign Affairs department shows, left the position in September of 2019. The scandal? That I didn’t immediately change every reference to being HonCon on my resume and social media on September 8, 2019. Oh, the horror!
July 2020: Having failed to raise any money to fix their sailboats (and having completely abandoned Earl de Blonville’s personal sailboat, COURAGE, to rot at the dock in Denmark) ORI has pivoted to a new scheme. Now, they will “develop Australia’s first integrated Ocean Literacy program and provide a key environmental resource for Northern Rivers students and teachers.” (my emphasis). Towards that end, Earl de Blonville has created YET ANOTHER new website. Earl’s nonprofit, Oceanic Research Institute plan to prepare “Australia’s first” educational materials, which may surprise the easily Googled people in Australia and New Zealand who have been working on and producing ocean literacy materials since 2002.
Earl(e?) de Blonville is enamored with being “first” (i.e., ORI is “the world’s first independent, fully sustainable oceanic research organisation”; “Earle de Blonville is the pioneer of a radical new leadership system that will change everything”; “Postformal Leadership itself is revolutionary” and “will totally change how advanced Leadership is practiced into the 21st century”).
All this revolutionary “firstness” is ironic in view of Earl de Blonville’s derisive public quote about “plentiful and tiresome I-Was-There-First types”. But that irony seems lost on Earl as is the irony of declaring yourself the sole savior of “leadership” based on an academic “discipline” which you made up and no one has ever heard of.
“Our Leadership philosophy is: “Leadership is neither born nor taught, but circumstance calling forth a champion” (The use of “Our” begs the question of whether Earl has adopted the pronouns of monarchy or perhaps he has a mouse in his pocket). If that philosophy raises more questions in your mind than answers, rest assured because “Earle de Blonville is a world leader in the radical new leadership system that will change everything.” The condensed Cliff Notes version of Earl’s “leadership system” is “quit high school, start a small business, lead expeditions then claim to be a business coach and leadership expert. Whatever you do, don’t actually study anything but rely on intuition fueled bombast (and something called ‘self-talk’)”.
There, I have saved you the cost of a coaching session with Earl.
Surely we can rest assured that this “radical new leadership system” has resulted in a well-documented and peer-supported solid track record of leadership success for Earl. Would that it were so.
The qualities of an effective leader will always include honesty and trustworthiness in the top tier. Consider this 4/23/2020 tweet:
Here’s how this incident was described in the book written by the expedition videographer who was filming the incident:
“Bloomfield decided to forge ahead, having seen me filming non-stop. In a bold attempt to showboat, he made a rash decision to careen over the corner of a small ice floe, but balance made him pay for his error and his kayak tipped sideways, dumping him upside down in the frigid waters. He was submerged for moments before attempting an Eskimo Roll technique to right himself. His first attempt was in vain as he reversed back into a submerged position. He tried again. He got halfway back up then returned once again to the icy water. It seemed, by now, that he’d abandoned the roll technique and squeezed out of his kayak beneath the surface. Like a sailor overboard, he quickly resurfaced and clung onto his capsized kayak until the rest of the team pulled alongside him, including the Zodiac. He clambered into the Zodiac shaking, quivering and, not the least, embarrassed. I spotted Joy from the corner of my eye and he was straining himself from guffawing out loud in amusement. Larry and Pompeii took control of Earl’s partially submerged kayak and assessed the damage. Bloomfield had completely waterlogged his entire kit including the latest Nikon reflex camera and the ultra expensive zoom lens.“
Anyone can make a mistake. It takes honesty and character to resist making life-threatening melodrama of your misjudgment. One does have to give credit though, for a superhuman sense of balance. Few mortals can “stand on” their kayak with such nonchalance.
4/17/2020: Earl has added another jaw-droppingly bizarre 6 page missive at Issuu.com. It seems Earl knows everything he knows about Montana from old Westerns. Of particular interest is the comparison of Montana to North Korea. Download the missive with annotations here:
4/13/2020: Earl created a fake account at Issuu.com in MY name with a picture of ME taken from my FB page. All in order to post a FAKE “public announcement” about me being a troll. How boneheadedly unbelievable is it that someone would post a document exposing THEMSELVES as a troll? This is a form of mental illness.
The websites of Earl’s various schemes over the years, arcticexplorer.com, arcticexplorer.net, 9sails.com, earldeblonville.com (Earl de Blonville’s ORIGINAL website) were all archived at archive.org (Wayback Machine). In late 2019 de Blonville went to the considerable trouble of demanding that archive.org destroy those records.
He has intentionally obliterated the online records of his own professional history, of which he is the sole author.
2/15/2020 Earl’s personal sailboat, CAROLA/COURAGE, which was slated to do bioacoustic research after being refitted at the cost of 3 million dollarshas disappeared from the Oceanic Research Institute LinkedIn page and the ORI website. The sailboat is currently in Denmark and is a “wreck” (quote from previous owner whose family had Carola for 25 years as personal yacht). Local sources say she is resting on the bottom at her mooring.
