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1. Hi Alan,
   Regarding your story about Christina, the Athol Burns cutter, I knew Christina very well.
   What a delightful surprise to fill in part of a 6 decades ago gap and to learn of her excellent condition now in the hands of such a caring owner in distant Canada.
   Bill McQueen, a skilled young boat builder, built Christina at his family home in Wellington. She was kauri planked with a laid deck of Matai, an Oregon mast, boom and bow sprit with a laminated semi circular Oregon bumpkin to take the backstay. Christina would have been launched in the early 50’s, and was moored in the somewhat exposed Oriental Bay `marina’, overlooked by the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club. As a youngster, less than a decade after the second world war when times were financially tight, I would take the train to Wellington and walk along the wharves to admire the boats on their moorings in the marina. One weekend, by chance, I met Bill McQueen who had Christina alongside the little jetty. He was, as is the norm, doing some routine maintenance on what was, to my boyhood eyes, his large and beautiful 26 foot cutter. We got chatting, I was invited to come aboard and subsequently, I became a crew member. Amongst my most formative and definitive memories was one Friday evening slipping the moorings and crossing Cook Strait at night in a favourable southerly breeze. We entered Tory Channel and anchored at a late hour some short distance in on the port hand in a sheltered little bay amongst other boats all illuminated by starlight.
   We had a great sail back on the sunny Sunday, a starboard tack reach. I was hooked.
   regards
   Bruce

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