Duetto Sailing Sunday

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DUETTO

I spotted Duetto at the 2015 Mahurangi Regatta & took the above photo on an early morning row. She looks very salty & no doubt has a few blue water miles under her keel.
Possibly lives at Gulf Harbour marina. Interested in more details – I am assuming she is wood……… I’ve been wrong before 🙂

Hopefully as you are reading this the Easter bunny will have found you & they is some chocolate on the diet today. Not sure that bunnies can swim so I might be out of lucky on Raindance.

02-12-2015 Duetto Update
photos & details ex Ken Ricketts. rewritten by Alan H

Firstly all those in the comments section that picked her as a swimming pool (ferro cement) were right. Putting that to the side she is very salty.
Some details – she is 35′ at the waterline with a 12′ beam & was built to a Jay Benford design, a prolific American custom boat designer. She was constructed by William (Bill) Hooker & launched in 1986 at Napier NZ. Shortly after she was brought to Mahurangi by the original owner & spent the next 4 years sitting on her moorings unused. Sadly her owner contracted cancer during this period & died, with Duetto still brand new effectually & unused. Her Isuzu 50 hp diesel had under 100 hours on the clock & her sails were unused.

The present owners Geoff Plimmer & partner Pat bought her in 1992 off the original owner, 2 weeks before he passed away.
Geoff & Pat spent 10 years from 2002, circumnavigating the world in her, as per the map photo below. Duetto’s worldly travels are recorded in the book ‘Around the World in a motorsailer’ penned by Geoff Plimmer, copies are still available for purchase ($28), you can contact Geoff here duetto1@xtra.co.nz

Duetto presently calls Gulf Harbour home.

 

 

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19 thoughts on “Duetto Sailing Sunday”

  1. I also have a Jay Benford 35 Foot Gaff rig Motorsailor named the Katie Ann.
    She also has a ferro cement hull and decks. Her home port is in Bay City Mich.
    I plan to get your book and read about your sailing adventures.

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  2. I know nothing of yachts, but thought she looked pretty but sturdy, so snapped her as we went past on the ferry, also going RTW – by bicycle. Mapua, Oct 17.

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  3. We are the happy owners of a ferro cement yacht, Te Kaitoa. It was designed as a wooden boat by my boat builder father in the early 70s, but the person who commissioned the build wanted ferro as it was very popular at the time so this is what happened. We bought it six years ago and we have had a bundle of fun in with no hassles or problems at all with the hull which is as sound as a bell. She is a lovely looking boat and sails beautifully.
    The history of the boat includes a world circumnavigation, numerous trips into the Pacific and a circumnavigation around Australia (including a bit of gun-running too!).
    Having said this, as a boat builder, I am a wooden boat nut as well.

    Grant Stone

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  4. Duetto was built by a good friend of mine in Hastings NZ and who has sadly passed on before his time. The yacht was very well built and yes has been around the world.I am also the owner of a ferro cement yacht and despite the usual bit of bad weather, have sailed many offshore miles without mishap.
    I will bite my tongue on replying to the many misinformed bloggers about ferrocement but will say that it does not rot or have worm problems like wood.

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  5. Yes she has a salty look about her, my friends with boats of this construction prefer them to be called GRP, which I understand is Gravel Rocks and Pebbles….

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  6. Te he!!! I love it!
    I thought I had heard them all.
    Personally I have a clean slate, it’s not my fault the two men in my life didn’t know any differently.
    Hey Alan!, your blog brings such joy to my day… Have a good one.

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  7. With apologies in advance to all footpath owners – don’t hate me. I think I sailed on a ferro yacht once…

    My Dad used to speak (generally when poking fun at ferro yacht owners) about the likely outcome of a direct lightning hit on the mast of a Ferro Cement Yacht.

    He predicted all the cement would be blasted off the reinforcing and you are left with a large birdcage. One that rapidly transforms into a large craypot – prebaited.

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  9. A former partner in my practice was in the passage entering Port Moresby in his ferro-cement big Hartley. Carelessly, he was trailing a rope which, inevitably, wrapped itself around the prop. Unfortunately, the prop stopped but the Ford kept rotating, briefly. The boat was a writeoff. QED as Ken is wont to say.

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  10. There are some very well found ferro constructed boats out there. I personly won’t ever own one until I see a hollowstone block float past me but it’s hardly PC to say ferro construction is devils work !! Tut bloody tut. Cheers.

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  11. Oops! Looks like I should have known about this yacht had I been reading the Island Cruising News Letter.
    You are so very right Alan – she has done a lot of blue water cruising, I shall check with John and Lyn Martin of Island Cruiseing but she has probably been around the world plus some said George. And yes, ferro cement.
    Best of all though, we have just had a superb dinner of freshly caught snapper caught only a few hours ago on our 38 ft ferro cement Donovan designed launch.
    Ferro is truly a good fish magnet.

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  13. We were parked near her at Scott’s Landing. Can’t say that I had any dark thoughts on her construction materials. If steel, glass or ferro, they’ve done a great job of disguising the Devil’s work.

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  16. Oh well, in the interim-
    My father was a panel beater for a good twenty five years then worked in Greenhithe for Morley Sutherland, building Ferro cement boats, whom he really respected.
    So we not only had cars on the drive-way at home, at that time, but very nicely plastered retaining walls around the slopping section, a mahogony coffee table and bookshelf for my room, which I still have.

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