OCEAN STAR – A Floating Apartment
Todays woody – Ocean Star, is probably the cheapest apartment / home that you could buy in NZ at the moment. The fact Ocean Star has a bath backs up the owners ‘live aboard’ claim 🙂
Ocean Star is 55’ in length, with a 15’ beam. Built in kauri to a Jack Guard design in c.1950.
If you wanted to leave the mooring a 160hp Detroit 471 diesel engine is below decks. As per the photos she is very well fitted out and at $135k ono seems a bargain. The price includes her Tauranga waterfront mooring.
Thanks to Ian McDonald for the tme listing heads up.
I see in the comments section that she in a previous life was a Govt. vessel servicing the Hauraki Gulf islands – can we learn more about her work-boat days.
15-05-2023 UPDATE: Photo below ex Chris Rabey, sent in by Russell Ward
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New photo added. Alan H
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I recall that Lionel Brock was the skipper of Ocean Star for many years when the vessel was servicing the lighthouses.
Owen Thorburn [RIP] was also employed to carry out electrical work on the lighthouses and sailed on many trips aboard Ocean Star
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Ocean Star was the Marine Dept. radar training ship in Auckland when I did my ticket in 1960. Bill Dumbleton was skipper then. Bills father had been boss at Winstones yard at MereMere and Bill and his brother Ray went to school at Mercer and Pukekohe.
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Just search the words Jack Guard in the boat section of tme. Alan H
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Hi Alan,
I’ve searched TM without success – do you have a reference or contact for the sale of Ocean Star, please?
Kind regards
Graham Rowe
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Ocean Star was owned by Barry Crump in the early 90’s. He lived on her in Havelock.
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Alan,
As Cadet Officers with the USSCo. from 1956 to 1960 we were required to pass the Radar Observer’s Certificate before being eligible to sit the Second Mate’s certificate at the end of our apprenticeship.”‘Ocean Star” had a curtained off radar room in the main cabin with a chart table of a size to allow plotting to be done, and where the trainee had only the radar screen to know what was going on outside. One of the old Navy ML’s would steer a pre-determined zig zag course, whilst those of us under training would take radar ranges and bearings and plot the target’s track, working out such things as the time of collision, point of nearest approach, speed of the target and possible collision avoidance manoeuvers as well as our own position, speed etc., from our observations on the PPI. I passed my certificate number 44 on 1st May 1959 under the tutelage of Captain Colin Millar-Williams. One of his amusements was on a flat calm day to have Pony steer towards a herd of seaguls parked on the water then ask me what I saw. When I responded that it was a vessel or an obstruction and that we should stop or alter course, he drew the curtain open to reveal the seagulls. Next time under the same circumstances I advised that the target was a herd of birds and to continue on course & speed only to seeee the Browns Bay Reef ahead when the curtain was opened! I have a memory that Pony More may have been the launch skipper for the then Marine Department.
Ken Mulgrew
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I was crew on The Star when she was fisheries patrol vessel in the Gulf . Ian McLean was skipper , Bill Dumblton was one of the crew. Great times covering Little Barrier,to Colville area.
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When I joined the Lighthouse Service in 1974 the Ocean Star was then under the control of the Marine Div of the Ministry of Transport (ex Marine Dept) and moored at Marsden wharf, but wasnt used much as the GMV Stella had just been launched and commissioned as the new lighthouse tender for the northern region. One of our guys on the lighthouse maintenance team had a restricted ticket so we used to use the Ocean Star for inner gulf jobs when the Stella was out doing her fortnightly service runs to the manned lights. We saw this more as a perk than anything and I recall some great fishing trips and some wild nights in the Mansion House pub while we were waiting for ‘the weather to settle!’
If my memory serves me correctly the Ocean Star sometime, possibly in the late 70s, took on the role as the Radar Training vessel for the same department and placed with a permanent skipper before the Tio was converted to do the same job later on.
So in trying to piece all this together I would say it would have been around 1980 sometime when the Ocean Star left the MOT and I have an idea it went to another Govt department, possibly the MOW or DOC but I am sure others with better memories will be able to tell more accurately her history around that time .
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