Back in May 2018 when I was loitering around the waterfront at Sandspit I was taken by the 40′ canoe stern 1904 launch – Tamahere. She must have changed hands around the same time and at some stage relocated to Kerikeri, Northland.
Sadly she has suffered a mishap due to deferred maintenance and has taken of a lot of water, but didn’t sink. There is a long list of required work to get her sea worthy again but her current tme price / bid is sub $600. Auction closes this Sunday at 9.52am. (thanks Ian McDonald for the listing heads up)
As the owner states ‘definitely a project not for the faint-hearted’ – but a bargain entry into the wooden boating movement.
In between lock-downs in June 2021 I had cause to do a trip to Tauranga and took up Doug Owens invitation to visit the yard to get a peek at the refit of his 1937 Colin Wild built 55’ yacht – Nereides. The project was well underway and the commitment to best in class and standard of workmanship was already on display.
Yesterday Doug made contact to let me know that Nereides was back in the water and aside from some final interior work the refit was complete.
The gallery of photos above says it all, the pilot house just glows – well done to Doug and son Mohi. We will keep you updated as the final items are ticked off the to-do list.
The 40’ carvel planked – Heather was built in 1965 by Doug Robb and spent her first 35 years as a commercial fishing boat. In 2000 Miller & Tunnage converted Heather to pleasure boat and installed the 1996 Gardner 6LXB, which was brand new at the time. Like all good Gardners she is very efficient e.g. at 5.5 knots, running at 800rpm, she sips 1L pnm. Normal cruise speed is 7.5 knots, but can be taken up to 9.5 knots max.
To use the old car dealer term – Heather comes with all the fruit, incredibly spec’ed and all set for some serious cruising.
Thanks to Ian McDonald for the tme heads up
04-10-2022 INPUT FROM Philip Trow
“Hi, Philip here….the present owner of Heather (2022). It is great to see a correct and largely accurate report on Heather. A couple of things to add: MV Heather was originally built by the Heberley family of the Marlborough sounds. She is named Heather after Heather Heberley (NZ author of some note).
Heather has been a particularly reliable and forgiving vessel for myself and previous owners. I have taken her around most of the South Is and I know previous owners have also used her for some great trips around the North is. She is very economical to run (1l/nm @ 800rpm/5.8kts exactly and circa 9l/hour at 1050rpm/ 7kts average.) Large 1200l+ tanks give her a very usable range. She also has a 6kw gen set and 800watt+ solar panels to handle long periods at mooring or unattended. As of writing she has less than 3600 hours from new on the Gardner 6lxb. That is very few hours on a Gardner.
Heather was rebuilt around 2000 and a great deal of heavy duty good quality equipment was installed. All of the fittings and equipment are much more robust than you would typically find on a pleasure vessel.
MV Heather has benefited from myself and previous owners who have maintained her to a good standard and also spent significant amounts keeping her up to date with features like AIS, drip free shaft seal and Blackwater.
I have retired from aviation, and now have a larger “Bluewater boat”, hence Heather is somewhat regrettably on the market.”
Not a woody and not a boat but after yesterdays weather it seems very fitting for a story 🙂 Amazingly the story of this Marton, Manawatu NZ Airbnb popped up in the Financial Times (FT) Weekend Magazine. Sleeps 4 and has a very nautical fit out.
Link below if your in the area and looking for somewhere to stay…….
In the interest of keeping you all abreast of the process of the restoration of 1948 Colin Wild built launch – Haunui, last week I paid a visit to master craftsman Paul Tingey. It has been 8 months since my last visit (where does the time go) and Paul and his team have made big advancements on the project. At first glance – lots of glowing timber either on display or peeking out from behind masking tape, but oh boy the focus is on systems, and the team are performing magic in terms of the available space and keeping it out of sight.
Check out the anchor winch, serious bling. And at the other end of the scale – the original ships clock has been retained – we like that.
I wasn’t brave enough to ask about an estimated re-launch date – but I’ll be back well before that happens 🙂
We all know the correct answer when some asks “does my behind look big in these jeans” well in the same vein someone needs to tell the owner of the above launch not to use a wide angle lens for the hero shot 🙂
Putting that aside today’s woody according to her tme listing (thanks Ian McDonald) has a great back story – built in 1912 by the daughter of John Geard, the Geard family were early pioneers in the South Island. In fact the mother was the first English woman settler in the South Island. The family were whalers in the Marlborough area.
The launch is 46’ in length and built from kauri. Her engine is a 1950, 60hp Cummings diesel.
An interesting mix of design styles on display – it states that she s a ‘dreadnought’ design, not sure what that means – dreadnought is mostly connected to early 1900 battleships and more modern day submarines.
The challenge would be to keep as is or get the tungsten tipped chainsaw out and start again.
Can we put a name to the boat and learn more about her?
INPUT EX CAMERON POLLARD – Named Dreadnaught. Owned by the Gaurd family for most of the century. 43 ft long, 4cyl Ford engine. Largely original – photos below
Back in April 2021 we had a great discussion on the Imatra – the 123 year old Stow & Sons gaff yawl racing yacht that sailed from the UK to NZ back in 1949 and sadly these days is berthed in the Tamaki River, Auckland and in rather poor condition. There was first-rate input from numerous woodys – link below to that story
Fast forward to last week and Deidre Brown ‘discovered’ the WW site will doing a google search and today we get a wonderful insight into the early life of the yacht and how it ended up down under. I’ll let Deidre tell the story. Enjoy 🙂
“My father Albert (Jim) Brown (b. 1922) was one of the crew of the Imatra that sailed her to New Zealand. Jim had seen the Imatra at Plymouth as he prepared to leave England as crew, with his fiend Ben, onboard the Palmosa in 1948. Both yachts were sailing to Barbados. Jim and Ben left the Palmosa at Barbados and were hired by Captain Nelson as crew for the Imatra to sail her to New Zealand (a two month journey). The following transcript is an excerpt from oral history interview I undertook with my father, Jim, about the Imatra for a school project in 1986. The square brackets are my additions:
‘Captain Nelson was in his 70s. He’d been a merchant seaman captain; he had spent most of his sailing years travelling between East Africa and India, the sort of tropical seamanship where the mate did all the work, and the captain just did his hobbies in the cabin. He was a nice, easy going, old bloke. He had originally come from New Zealand and was intent on going back there. Why? I don’t know. He didn’t seem to know either. I don’t know why he didn’t just sell the yacht and fly across. Two of his crew had left and the third was in hospital with an appendicitis and he didn’t know what he was going to do for crew, so we told him he had some crew … us! He said he needed a cook and we said we’d provide him with a cook because the naval captain [of the Palmosa] was intent on keeping his cook and we thought that he didn’t deserve him. Just to seal the deal the captain gave Ben not a packet, but a whole carton of cigarettes, which made Ben his slave for life, I think. He had tons of whisky and beer on board, which looked very good to us. In all respects, she was a very well-found ship. She was a bit rough-looking after the naval captain’s yacht, which was very smooth. But this one was an old one. Racers used to race ships back in the Irish Sea in the 1880s. This one had been owned by an old lady [Cecilia Mackenzie], I believe. She had originally been a racing yacht with one very long mast, which had been shortened a bit, and a second mast put in and made into a ketch. She was slow, but she was also very stiff and steady, and I don’t think she could ever sink. Beautiful ship inside; all panelled in Bird’s Eye Maple. We got the cook, and we went on board and this other chap came out of hospital. We all set off and we went through the Panama Canal, down to Tahiti, and down to New Zealand. The conditions were very good. We were plagued with a lack of wind rather than too much of it. The only storm we saw was one when we were getting to New Zealand, when we were hit by it. It nearly blew us all the way back to Tahiti…. [We arrived in Auckland on] 1 April 1949…. We stayed on the yacht [Imatra] and we moved from the Ferry Building around to Bailey’s ship building yards in Herne Bay. Or was it Freeman’s Bay? We were put on a berth there. While we were there Sir Ernest Davis, who used to be the Mayor of Auckland at one time and owned one of the local breweries, came down and he liked the look of the yacht because it was old. He was an oldish man and he liked things old. It also reminded him of his previous yacht, which he had given over to the navy during the War. It got wrecked. He bought the yacht and Ben and I looked after it for several weeks and lived on board until Ernie Davis decided it was time for him to do a bit of sailing and for us to go. So we had to come ashore and go boarding. We were very sad to leave her.’
I have dad’s interior and exterior photographs (refer above) of the Imatra in 1949. He always talked of his time sailing the Imatra as some of his happiest and talked often of her elegance and Captain Nelson’s kindness.”
The photos were taken on Jim’s 1940s camera and Deidre rediscovered the negatives in 2007 and had them digitised. While not all perfectly sharp but they show us life aboard as she was then, rigged as a a ketch. There is one good view of half the deck, taken by Jim up the mast with his camera. Deidre has found her father’s friend’s full name, who was also crew on the Imatra between Barbados and Auckland, he was – Albert (Ben) Widdall. Deidre commented that Jim couldn’t remember who the old man and the boy was in the group shot, which is the sharpest picture showing the timber wall linings, Jim is second from left and Ben is first on the right. Deidre can’t find any more information on Captain Nelson, although we have a photo (below) that Jim took of him.
21-07-2022 NEW INPUT ex Deidre Brown
Deidre has sent in the below articles (x7) that she found on ‘Papers Past’
– they cover parts of Imatra’s journey from Portsmouth to Auckland, names of other crew members, and Captain John Nelson’s obituary (what an incredible life). The copy highlighted in green is the some interesting bits (a German first owner?), and included links back to the original sources .
Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVII, Issue 14972, 10 May 1949, Page 6
The purchase of the 72ft English built ketch Imatra by a former Mayor of Auckland, Sir Ernest Davis, has prompted a young Englishman now working in Wellington to tell the story of how the yacht was sailed 13,000 miles to New Zealand.
Eight people, including a woman, made the trip, eight people who had decided that they had to reach New Zealand somehow. Captain J. Nelson, the vessel’s owner and a retired master mariner, was Greytown-bom and intended visiting New Zealand to see relatives. Mr Malcolm Hector, now of Wellington, joined the vessel in reply to an advertisement, and as soon as the ketch was at sea found himself with the cook’s job. The woman member of the company, Mrs R. Godsall, had intended to do the cooking, but became too ill through seasickness to carry on with it.
“I just tied the pots and pans on the stove and hoped for the best,” he said of his culinary efforts. “In all the eight months we took on the trip, only on one day did we. have cold meals because of really heavy seas.”
In that eight months they had experienced Atlantic storms, including the tail-end of a hurricane, a storm in the Caribbean in which a hole was torn in the side after the mainsail boom gybed and caught the yacht’s only dinghy, which was lost, and a spell of severe bad weather which sent the yacht back on her course twice after leaving Tahiti. Incidentally,’ Mr Hector’s cooking was no process of trial and error or proficiency picked up at short notice. He had cooked for his English home, and had acquired knowledge of invalid cookery during his wartime job of male nurse in the Merchant Navy.
Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25670, 6 December 1948, Page 8
Yacht Leaves for N.Z.— The 70-foot yacht Imatra, with the owner, Captain Nelson, a retired Royal Navy officer, and a crew of six paying passengers. left England for Auckland on August 18. according to private advice received to-day. Captain Nelson is a New Zealander. He will probably call at a southern Rhodesian port for his wife and daughter, who are visiting there.— (P.A.)
Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25776, 11 April 1949, Page 8 (also reported in the Gisborne Herald, Otago Daily Times, Wanganui Chronicle, Ashburton Guardian)
Yacht Changes Hands.—The 72ft ketch Imatra, which recently arrived in Auckland after an eight-months trip from England, has been bought by Sir Ernest Davis from Captain John Nelson. The Imatra will be the largest privately-owned yacht in the Auckland fleet. She will soon be hauled on to the special slip, surveyed, and probably altered. The Imatra was built in 1898 at Shoreham for a German yachtsman. Captain Nelson bought her in 1946.—(P.A.)
Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28206, 19 February 1957, Page 10
Sir Ernest Davis, one of the oldest yachtsmen in Auckland, celebrated his 85th birthday last Sunday at the helm of his A-class keeler Imatra. A former Mayor of Auckland and a noted benefactor of the city, he has been yachting on the Waitemata for 72 years and has been a member of yacht clubs for 70 years. Sir Ernest Davis is a former owner of the Morewa which he gave to the defence authorities during the Second World War. He also owned the famous Viking, which now belongs to Mr Brian Todd, of Wellington, and sails on the Wellington harbour.
Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28824, 19 February 1959, Page 14
AUCKLAND, February 18. Sir Ernest Davis, the veteran Auckland yachtsman, has given himself a birthday present of a 72-foot twin-screw ocean-going diesel yacht. It was Sir Ernest’s 87th birthday yesterday. He sold his sailing yacht, Imatra, three months ago [1958] after more than 70 years of sailing. During that time he owned other well-known yachts, including the Matangi, Viking and Moerewa….
THREE YACHTS TO SAIL FROM AUCKLAND TO UNITED STATES
It is expected that three yachts, the 38ft. ketch Faith, the 36ft. ketch Galatea and the 38ft. sloop Trade Winds, will leave from Auckland for the United States in the near future. Each will carry a crew of three men. Mr. A. Rusden, of Auckland, owner and skipper, will be in charge of Faith, which has a beam of lift. 6in. and a draught of 6ft. She is Marconi rigged and is fitted with a wireless transmitter and receiver and an auxiliary engine. Mr. Rusden hopes to sail in the first week in May. The other two members of the crew will be Captain J. C. Pottinger, who arrived recently from England in the ketch Imatra, and Mr. P. Samuels, of Auckland….
Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29022, 10 October 1959, Page 15
Captain John Nelson, who died at Timaru this week, was born at Greymouth. He was a son of Mr Charles Nelson, one of Wairarapa’s early settlers. Captain Nelson, who was 79, went to sea in 1897 as a boy on a trial trip from Wellington to England. Leaving the barque, he joined J. D. Clink and Company, Greenock, Scotland, as an apprentice, serving for more than four years. He then joined the cable-layer, Colonia, laying cable from Manila to Guam and Midway. For the next 10 years he served in five sailing ships. In 1908 he joined the Burma Oil Company and was third mate on one of the company’s tankers. He was captain from 1912 until 1939, when he was promoted to acting-superintendent of the company, with headquarters at Rangoon. He retired- in 1939 and went to England. At the outbreak of the Second World War he became a Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, trained sea cadets in the Isle of Man, and commanded small vessels round the English coast. Captain Nelson, in 1948, obtained the Imatra, a ketch, which he sailed to New Zealand with a crew of four. The 30-ton ketch took about six months to come out, though it was at sea for only 130 days. Captain Nelson’s wife is in Rhodesia.
Back in Nov 2020 boat builder Alan Craig (Craig Marine) and I were chatting re a 1956, 17’ clinker run-about named Sea Spray that was on tme and claimed to be built by J Logan. A quick call to Harold Kidd confirmed the provenance and Alan acquired Sea Spray on behalf of a client.
The yard re-planked the bottom up to water line and rebuilt the whole cabin top and interior. While to some it may appear a lot of effort for a 17′ boat, remember woodys it’s the real deal – a Jack Logan boat.
The project was finished at the end of 2021 and relaunched at Xmas 2021.. Now called Helena, she has been converted to electric, through a steerable pod in place of the rudder. Helena will do a good 10hrs without charging, Alan commented that’s a lot of trips to the Lake Rotoiti hot pools 🙂 I’m told Helena is a quite comfortable boat, even with 4 people aboard.
Her old engine, a 10hp Arona diesel is hopefully going to replace another in a yacht in the far north.
The 42’ John Lidgard designed and built launch – Participate very comfortably fits into the ’spirit of tradition’ classic category. Launched in 1982 she is quite beamy (approx 12’) and draws 3’2”. Built from kauri double diagonal planking and glassed.
Get up and go is via a Volvo TAMD 70, derated from 380hp to 300hp. This gives the her a very respectable cruising speed of 14 knots, and tops out at 19 knots.
As you’ll see from above photos, lots of living space and at a pinch can sleep 10.
Participate is kept in immaculate condition and yes she is for sale and at a very favourable price. Price indication included to stop the fender kickers filling up my email inbox and allow serious buyers to consider the vessel – Participation will sell in the low to mid $200’s. That woodys is a very fair price for a boat of her size, condition (turn key) and looks.
Last week we featured the relaunch of the 48’, 1919, Joe Slattery built launch – Raiona, after a 2 year refit at the Colin Brown / Josh Hawke yard. Today thanks to her owners we get to have a gander down below. Launching story link below – https://waitematawoodys.com/2022/07/09/raiona-relaunch/
The ’new’ decor (can I use the word when describing a classic woody?) really lightens the interior up and the varnished woodwork is magnificent. Well done to everyone that rubbed up against her during the last two years – below is a shot of Raiona leaving the yard, on-route to relaunching.
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