Lady Sandra

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LADY SANDRA
Built by the Lane Motor Company for Len Peckham in 1947, powered with 2 x 6 cyl Scripps petrol engines. One of the glamour boats in her day but misfortune followed her around – she once picked up a tow line from a boat being towed, off Devonport wharf & got the tow rope around both propellers & pulled the propeller struts out of the hull & sank, just as they got her to the nearby beach. Later on in life  she went to Fiji where she was wrecked in a storm in the 1980’s. In the photos above the photo of the boys & man on the wharf, – the man is Alan Horsefall who owned Mansion House at that time.

The photos of her tied to the right hand side of the Mansion  House wharf have the Nancibel & Korora inside her. The bridgedecker, we can see a little of the dodger of in one photo, is most likely Royal Falcon. Also the boat in the Alan Horsefall photo is almost certainly Valsan.
Today’s photos are from Ken Jones & were emailed to me along with comments by Ken Ricketts. You can read more of Ken’s recollection of Lady Sandra here https://wordpress.com/post/waitematawoodys.com/1166

I’m loving the A.M.Y.C. life buoy in the bottom photo 🙂

18 thoughts on “Lady Sandra”

  1. Pingback: The Sinking of Lady Sandra | waitematawoodys.com #1 for classic wooden boat stories, info, advice & news

  3. Errr…… Sail number is actually CYC 54 belonging to Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, and Solveig, Halvorsens bros 36-footer, and eventual winner of that particular Trans Tasman race.

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  4. I misunderstood. There is a wholesome tram topped launch close-up which looks like a big version of the pleasure launch Korora and assumed it meant this boat. Also, if you are officially quoting something, use quotation marks at both beginning and end, and don’t fully capitalise “…END OF QUOTE…”.

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  5. Further to Nath’s comments above, herewith an extract from the “Memoires of Charlie Weis,” who ran the ferries from the1930s to the 1960s, & is the subject of a very interesting & detailed history of the island from the 1920s to the1960s, as an existing post, already on woodys.

    I QUOTE;
    “In 1944 Gubbs Kawau Services bought the Korora from the Air Force. The Korora was a thirty six foot launch with a large wheelhouse seating 15, a cabin, a large cockpit with a seat on the deck across the back. she was powered with a Chrysler petrol motor, which we changed to a Perkins diesel. It was found necessary to have two boats to keep the service running, While the Nancibel was on survey.
    I took over the Korora and did special trips from the Sandspit.- END OF QUOTE

    This is straight form the Horses mouth & there is no doubt that one of the 2 ferries in the pic of the 2 of them is the KORORA. — I knew Charlie & the boats very well.

    My recall is, it was P6 Perkins — typical noisy P6, out the stern exhaust. — KEN R

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  6. One final things about the engines I almost forgot, they were right in the stern with vee drives & the reduction gears were built in to the vee drives. — KEN R

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  7. They were definitely Scripps 6’s around 90hp similar to WANDA II, with well silenced stern exhausts, with angled cowls over them, directing the exhaust toward the side slipstream, similar to Sou East. — KEN R

    Photo added below. AH

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  10. But, but, but, it’s ROYAL SAXON not SAXTON.
    I think you’re distracted much more by the charming lady in the bottom (I’ll rephrase that, lowest) pic. Alan, lad, she’s old enough to be your grandmother.

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  11. A couple of wee oops – In terms of the Royal Falcon / Saxon mix-up I can only blame my fixation for the beautiful Lady Saxon clouding my vision / mind. The builder of Lady Sandra confusion was based on my referring to the copy in the previous LS ww post & not checking the comments section were Harold corrected Ken Ricketts.
    Thank you Harold & Nathan for keeping me honest 😉 Oops corrected 🙂

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  13. There were a couple of editorial typo errors, on the part of the editor in the above, today, It is the ROYAL FALCON not the ROYAL SAXON that is in the image, & in my notes to the editor that accompanied the photos I never mentioned “Garth Lane,” — I referred only to “Lanes”– that was purely an editorial input item — nothing to do with me. — KEN R

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  15. The big yacht in the centre of the image is Col Wild’s TARA so it probably is the start of the 1951 Trans Tasman race. Her 1964 Noumea race under the Galbraiths started in Whangarei.

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  16. LADY SANDRA wasn’t built by Garth Lane, she was built by Lane Motor Boat Co. Ltd which had more personnel (and Lanes) than just Garth Lane who probably didn’t put his hand to a tool during her construction. It’s weird how Ken keeps trotting this out time and time again. Weird.
    Rant over, she was actually built by Lanes in 1947 for L.H. Peckham (Sea Spray September 1947)

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  17. Not the Korora, and by “Royal Saxton(sic)” I feel the author means Royal Falcon. The one being named(incorrectly) Korora has been a mystery boat here before, photographed with Cyrena and Lolo.

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