He was educated at St. John's College, Johannesburg, after which he went to sea and then joined the Hong Kong Police for two years, becoming an inspector and serving as commanding officer of a "penetration patrol" unit.
For the 1968 Observer Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race, Dalling was selected out of 40 applicants to skipper the yacht Voortrekker, a 50 ft ketch designed by the naval architect, Ricus van de Stadt, and built of wood-composite construction by Thesens of Knysna for the Springbok Ocean Racing Trust and sponsored by the Rembrandt Group of Companies.
Voortrekker's strength lay in her planking, consisting of three layers of Malaysian Meranti glued together with a fibreglass coat for binding and waterproofing and weighed 6½ tons, including the keel.
After the mast had been stepped, Bruce sailed her along the Atlantic seaboard for ninety minutes where many fans had assembled to welcome the sailor home.
Voortrekker then docked at Granger Bay, where Vice-Admiral Hugo Biermann, Dr Anton Rupert – head of the Rembrandt Group that underwrote the venture and Cape Town mayor, Mr G.E.
The race was by now acquiring a reputation for pushing forward the technology of ocean sailing, and the 1968 edition featured the first ever use of computer-based weather routing.
A far cry from today's laptop-laden yachts, this consisted of a land-based mainframe computer, the English Electric KDF9, linked by radio to 25-year-old school teacher Geoffrey Williams in his boat Sir Thomas Lipton.
Although outside private routing advice of this kind is no longer permitted in most "unassisted" races, it is now routine for ocean sailors to do similar analyses using their on-board computers to process public weather information.