SEAFARER
Started life as a motorsailer , built by Walter Deeming at Opua in 1963 to a John Brooke design. Seafarer was my ‘neighbour’ on the hard at Devonport Yacht Club last year & her owner Richard was the best neibour you could ask for. When ever I needed a second opinion all I had to do was tap on the hull & Richards head would top out.
The other plus was that Seafarer was very tired & needing a lot of love so if I got depressed I would just hop aboard Seafarer & 5 minutes there would see me walking away feeling better. That ‘fix’ did not last too long as Richard started at the stern & dam near rebuilt / replaced everything & in most cases he made everything himself, very talented guy + a great sense of humour. And the best bit, he bought the boat & did it up so his grandkids could go boating.
The before haul out photo versus the ready for relaunching photo tells it all – amazing. The wonderful finish is from Uroxsys, Richard was another of my converts.
A hear a new motor is going in this winter so Seafarer will almost be a new boat.
Now if I can just get him to join the CYA 🙂
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Lanes of Totara North built no launches after 1905 when they opened their yard in Mechanics Bay, Auckland.
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Hello Alan, thank you for the welcome. I was querying on behalf of my father Graeme (his father James purchased Seafarer). We will check family photo’s to see if we have anything…
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Hi Sally welcome to waitematawwoodys – do you by chance have any old photos of her?
Cheers Alan H
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Hello, my father James Sharp used to own her in the early 1970’s. She had a 3 cylinder Lister and manual box & a motor sailer with red sails. We thought she was built by Lanes in Totara North. Great to see her looking so smart!
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Make that DEEMING please?
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Well pass the plate of humble pie my way, I have just has a wake-up call on boat ‘facts’ & how easy it is to get it all wrong. When John Salthouse was talking on the boat, he had his wife with him & she is a Brooke. So when she was saying it was one of Johns boats she was referring to John Brooke not her husband, John Salthouse. Posting has been update .
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She certainly does look like one of his nice little sedans. I tried to find Roy Chaafe, whom I knew well in the 1970s, but he’s off the radar.
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With respect I question whether SEAFARER was built by Salthouses. She is not on John Salthouse’s list of vessels they built, but could of course have been built under a different name originally. My first record of her is when owned by Roy Chaafe of Takapuna in 1967 when he was Coastguard Group Captain.
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