Category Archives: Designers & Builders

Kiariki – 1964 Easter Cruise – Jack Brooke Collection #19

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Jack Brooke Cruise Collection #19 – Kiariki Easter Cruise  1964

Another Jack Brooke drawing, published on ww thanks to son Robert for making them available to ww followers. Jack produced a hand drawing on each cruise. Today’s post is the 19th featured – this one features the March 1964 Easter cruise to Gt Barrier & Kawau Islands. Given Jack did the drawing we can only assume that JS was the snorer.

The illustration of the 1907 A-Class Logan ‘Victory’ (A8) is recording that she was involved in a very big gas explosion on 30/03/1964 while moored at the Barrier. The culprit was thought to be a leaking gas cylinder connection. All 6 crew on board survived but 2 had to be transferred to Auckland Hospital by amphibian plane.

Victory is a very lucky vessel – she is now owned by the artisan shipwright/builder Marco Scuderi & is being restored at his yard. Lots of photos & tales from the past at this link http://www.mcnshipwrights.com/victory.html

Crew on board: John Brooke, Elsie Brooke, Judith Brooke & John Salthouse

How Many Boats Did McGeady Build? Updated 27/10/2015 (& the launch Fantasy)

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How Many Boats Did McGeady Build? Updated 27/10/2015

A MESSAGE FROM KAREN MOREN

I would personally like to thank everyone who has contributed to postings and supplied information on Granddads (Mac McGeady) and Ben Hipkins Supreme Craft boats.

Without all of this information and photos it would not be possible to be up to 140 pages and more with further info still to come.

Kind regards
Karen Moren

LIST OF MCGEADY/SUPREME CRAFT BOATS

SUPREME CRAFT was founded in the late 1930’s possibly 1936 by                               my Grandfather Clarence V. McGeady but everyone knew him as ‘Mac’. Due to ill health, he retired approximately 1962 and the business was taken over by Ben Hipkins. The actual builders of Supreme Craft boats are distinguished by the suffix of ”McGeady” or “Hipkins” as the case may be. It should also be noted that some Hipkins boats were based on McGeady Designs and suffixed accordingly. Where McGeady designs were used, and the boat was built by Hipkins this would be suffixed with, “Design McGeady/Built Hipkins

This is a list only. (I know many people have contributed pics and info which is on my acknowledgements page)

ALBACORA – McGeady

ALCYONE – McGeady

ALPHEUS – Design McGeady/ Built Hipkins

ALTAIR – McGeady

AMARYLLIS renamed KOALA – McGeady

ANTARES – McGeady

AQUARIUS – McGeady

AQUILA – McGeady

ARCTURUS – McGeady

AROHANUI – McGeady

ASTRA – McGeady

AUSTRALIS – McGeady

AWATERE – McGeady

CHALLENGER – McGeady

EL ALAMEIN renamed RANUI- McGeady

FANTASY – McGeady (sistership to ANTARES

HUKARERE – McGeady

LADY ALLYSON renamed ERINOR – McGeady

LADY DIANNA – McGeady

LADY HELEN ? – McGeady

LADY SUNSHINE renamed VARLENE -McGeady

MANUIA – McGeady

MARANOA – McGeady

NIKA-SIA – Ben Hipkins

RANGIORA – Gary Wheeler/Ben Hipkins built under McGeady banner

ROTOITI renamed ISLAND PRINCESS – McGeady

SCEPTRE – Ben Hipkins

TEMPEST – McGeady

VALWYN – McGeady

VENTURE – sister ship/hull to SCEPTRE – Ben Hipkins

WAIMARU – Ben Hipkins

WESTERING – Ben Hipkins

WHITE CLOUD – Design McGeady/Built Hipkins

2 x M-CLASS 18 foot Patikis – McGeady

M – 22 MILADY 1945

M – 35 MARIANA 1946

 

Fantasy – below b/w photo ex Karen Moren + colour photos & details ex Ken Ricketts

Built in 1952 by Mac McGeady for Colin Lannam. Ken believes that she was built on the basis of Lannam’s first boat, Lady Dianna e.g. McGeady built the hull & cabin then Lannam finished the interior. Ken commented that Lannam had masterful cabinet making skills.

Neither Karen or Ken know much more about Fantasy – can anyone add more details on her?

Astra

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McCeady on Astra
Mac McCeady c. late 1950′ / early 1960’s

Recent hauled pout at Sandspit photos

ASTRA

b/w photos ex Karen Moren’s mother Lyn McGeady,ex Ben Hipkins. other photos ex Ken Ricketts, details told to Ken Ricketts by Ken Robinson & Ven Barclay. edited by Alan H

Thought I would continue the McGeady thread of late.

Todays post is Astra, built in 1957 at 1A Summer St Ponsonby for Percy Ward, who had previously owned the Wairuama (refer earlier ww post).

Percy Ward did not keep her very long & sold her approximately a year later to Aussie Lawless, who was a good friend of the late Les Robinson & family & when a couple of years later Lawless become ill, Robinson bought Astra off him in 1960. Astra remained in the Robinson family until October 1992 (32yrs) when the Robinson family sold her to Ven Barclay the present owner.

She is 30′ LOA with a 10’4″ beam which made her extremely beamy. She is also one of the very few McGeady sedan toppers with a high bow & sweep in the deck that does not have the ‘signature’ McGeady look i.e oblong portholes in the bow.

Astra, as built, was a smorgasbord of timber e.g. kauri for the hull, spotted gum for the ribs, totara for the frames, pacific mahogany cabin tops &  interior, matai decks & a pohutukawa knee in the stem.

She was originally powered by an Austin “Skipper 100” 6 cyl 100 h.p. petrol engine with a side exhaust 6 inches above the waterline in amidships, which is still there exactly as it has been since she was built, however it has been blinded off inside & the exhaust is now just above the waterline out the starboard side of the tuck. The Austin was replaced in 1974 by a 60 hp 4 cyl Ford diesel.

Her varnished coamings were retained until fairly recently by Ven B but it became too much for him to maintain them, so he reluctantly painted them.

Rangiora

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RANGIORA

photos & details Karen Moren & Harold Kidd

The above b/w photo of Rangiora was sent in by Mac McGeady’s grand daughter Karen Moren ex her mother Lyn McGeady, Mac was her father in law. Karen gathered the story below a couple of years ago from one of McGeady’s apprentices – Ben Hipkins.
“Mac’s condition deteriorated and he was very confused and at this time we received an order from Gordon Collie for a 48ft bridge deck Motor Launch. Mac still had the ability to design the hull. This boat was too big to build in Summer Street, so we built the backbone and frames in the factory and built the boat in a shed supplied by Mr. Collie on a poultry farm at Pakuranga.
Gary Wheeler and I built the hull from the deck level and Gordon and his cousin Ralph laid the decks and built the superstructure and furniture, a truly excellent job. The name of this boat was Rangiora”.
Harold told ww that Rangiora was built in 1964  & she was a breakthrough McGeady design with the substantial beam of 15′ on an overall length of 52′. Her original engines were twin Fords. Tony Vazey bought her in the 1980s and replaced the Fords with twin GM 4/51 supercharged diesels. He kept her at Westhaven, always absolutely immaculate as you can see from Harold colour photo below. In late 2001 Tony sold her to Nick Tansey of Wellington. These days she can readily be seen from the shore on her marina berth in Wellington, a very beautiful hull with totally aesthetically pleasing topsides.

 

02-04-2020 – Input from Brian Hewitt – My company Sea Services had the pleasure of owning Rangiora for 4 or 5 years, my business partner was Fred Keith and we bought Rangiora in Whangamata, she was owned by Stan who ran the local putt putt golf park beside the movie theatre, he was in the middle of a very messy divorce and had to sell her. She was very tired in the exterior but good and sound and we brought her to Auckland to the Shipbuilders slipway and rebuilt the decks, took all the brightwork back to clean timber and applied 8 coats of varnish, recaulked and repainted the hull using Transocean paints. We serviced the Ford engines including replacing the injectors, serviced all the pumps etc…replaced the funnel, beds and squabs, the toilet, radio, steering cables, carpet etc and she was quite a picture and gave us a lot of enjoyment. This included 2 seasons in the BOI with trips to Whangaroa, The Cavalli Islands, Poor Knights and Cape Brett, many trips to Barrier and Coromandel and 2 trips to Mayor Is. We had on-going overheating issues when under max revs as her heat exchangers were barely adequate when the engines were in their full glory, the engines were also slightly out of sync and we tried changing propellers, fine balancing the drive shafts and realigning the motors with new mounts but never really solved the issue. We were originally on ‘A’ marina then moved over to (I think T) when Westhaven expanded the southern side. Fred left Sea Services in the early 80’s and I was also getting divorced so we sold her to fund the business. Rangiora was a Lloyds Registered vessel (I think she was 36 tons). We sold her to Murray from Chanton Apparel who took the engines out and had them balanced, replaced the cable steering with dual hydraulic steering and I think it was Murray who also rebuilt the stern into a walk through transom. In reality Murray bought Rangiora for the marina as 18M marinas were very sought after and he had a new 54′ launch being built by Salthouse. I saw Rangiora some years later at Tutukaka and she looked fabulous, also saw her in Wellington 3 years ago still looking good. I live in France most of the year and have some photos there and will revert with them when I return to France. Brian Hewitt

30-04-2020 Update from Brian Hewitt – “I’m back in France now and found my photo album that had some photos of Rangiora, I think we sold her in 1984. I also had an earlier 34′ launch called “Joel” built by Ship Builders, the new owners renamed her, I had a quick search and couldn’t find anything relating to her, is this a name anyone may have come across ?

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Sceptre

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SCEPTRE
photo & details from Karen Moren

Karen is the grand daughter of Mac McGeady & is attempting to track down / record as many of the the McGeady / Supreme Craft boats as she can. All she knows about Sceptre is that she was 36′ & built for a Mr. Stuart Dalton in the Archers Road factory off Wairau Road, Takapuna. Possibly c.1965.

Does anyone have any more info on her ?

29-10-2016 Photo added – is the photo above & below the same boat ? I took the photo during the Launch Parade at the 2016 Mahurangi Regatta.

sceptre

Wirihana Who ‘Built’ Her?

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WIRIHANA

Todays post is in two parts – first an attempt to ID some of the Colin Wild crew that built Wirihana. Chris McMullen, the caretaker of Wirihana had been looking through a box old of Wilson and Gould family photos & uncovered todays photos. Chris’s guess on a date for the above photos is 1933. Even thou its over 80 years ago one of the ww followers may recognize a relation. So folks – dig out those old family albums & lets see if we can put some names to the faces.
Col Wild and Mr Martyn Wilson are on the right. The man with the black hair holding the dog may be young Jack Gould who was (Chris believes) Mr Wilson’s step son. That needs to be verified. The Gould Family still own Wirihana to this day.

The 2nd part is to try & confirm what became of the earlier Wirihana, as pictured in the photo below. The ‘smaller’ Wirihana was also owned by the Wilson family. There is a family photo album recording a cruise on her. The album is dedicated to ‘The Crew of the Wirihana 1930-1’.
Chris wonders if the original broke her mooring. Interestingly there are some photos (not in the subject album) showing the wreckage of a wooden vessel but regretfully no details. Could it be that the current Wirihana was a replacement?

Looking forward to some interesting feedback. If you know anyone that had family or a relation that worked at Colin Wild’s yard in the early 1930’s can forward this ww posting on to them & ask for their help with ID’ing the people.

And lasting I could not do a Wirihana post without a photo showing how magnificent she is today 🙂

Update from Nathan Herbert

The below press clippings from the NZ Herald (2nd August 1933) make interesting reading. Wirihana (1) was relaunched on 01/08/1933 after an extensive overhaul at Lanes yard, the work included a new keel – so the questions are

1. Was the work done following an oops ?

2. Was W1 renamed, as W2 (Colin Wild) was being launched around this time?

Harold – where are you?, put down that legal brief & join in 🙂

Harold Kidd Input

My reconstruction of this tangled web is as follows (and some of it is conjecture).
1. Lane Motor Boat Co built WIRIHANA (1) for Joe Wilson in 1929. There is an image of LADY GAY (1) on Lanes’ slip at Mechanics Bay and she’s indistinguishable from WIRIHANA (1). photo below added by AH


2. She flew a “Wirihana” flag because “Wirihana” is maori-ised “Wilson” (and is nicely euphonic).
3. Colin Wild built WIRIHANA (2) in October 1933.
4. The quote above concerning WIRIHANA’s overhaul in 1933 is from the NZ Herald (owned by Wilson) but there’s an almost identical quote in the Herald of 17th November 1933 but referring to the boat as “J. M. Wilson’s LADY GAY”.
5. Clearly, WIRIHANA (1) was renamed LADY GAY while getting her big overhaul at Lanes in 1933 and after WIRIHANA (2) was launched. Her cabintop was altered drastically to provide full headroom so that her earlier semi-bridgedeck style disappears.
5. Wilson kept LADY GAY/WIRIHANA until July 1935, shortly before LADY GAY (2) was launched.
6. He then sold her to H. Walker and I lose sight of her, obviously with an agreed name change.
7. Sooner or later we’ll find out what Walker called her and say “Of course!”.

Pioneer II

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PIONEER II

photos ex Terry

This ones a mystery to me, I was sent the two photos with a note saying the smaller one is of the launching from Collings and Bell at St Marys Bay.

Who can tells us more about Pioneer II ?

Jack Brooke Cruise Collection #17 – A Late Cruise On Kiariki May 1963

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e Walker

Jack Brooke Cruise Collection #17 – A Late Cruise On Kiariki May 1963

Another  Jack Brooke drawing, published on ww thanks to son Robert for making them available to ww followers. Jack produced a hand drawing on each cruise. Today’s post is the 17th featured – this one shows a May 1963 cruise aboard Kiariki to the bottom end of Waiheke Island. It appears a landing at Man-O-War Bay (private prop) did not receive a hospitable greeting.  From the comments – ‘4 rolls in the main’ to the numerous ‘no thanks we don’t want a tow’ it must have been a mixed bag of conditions.

Crew Onboard: John Brooke, Elsie Brooke, Judith Brooke, Errol Slyfield & Bobbie Walker

Acquiesce – One of Norm Beetson’s 4 Sisters

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Acquiesce – One of Norm Beetson’s 4 Sisters
details & photos ex Jason Mills

The waitematawoodys article on Norm Beetson’s 4 Sisters was brought to Jason Mills families attention and they decided to add to the Acquiesce story.

Jason’s parents purchased Acquiesce around May 2008 and sold her sometime in 2010. His father first saw Acquiesce moored in the Tamaki River, approached the owner (who had owned her for approx. 30 years) and they agreed to sell her.
Although purchased in a seaworthy condition, she did need an amount of cosmetic repairs which Jason’s father started on. Unfortunately, his father developed health problems, which made the repairs very difficult to carry out and he decided to sell, still with alot to be done.
As a side note, not long after Jason’s parents had purchased Acquiesce it was brought to their attention the Sea Spray article on the 4 Sisters. After approaching Sea Spray (and having to purchase a subscription for a year) they sent the Mills family a scan of the article, but not the cover though.
The below relevant pages from the Sea Spray magazine are somewhat ‘warped’ due to being close to the centre fold but are still legible and also featured are photos of Acquiesce during the Mills ownership. The SS article also has a photo under construction and states the fourth as being named ‘Calypso’ and not  ‘Kakariki (launched as Georgella)’ as stated on the ww site.

Johnny Wray Is Calling For Your Help – Ngataki Finalist in Classic Boat Restoration of the Year

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Johnny Wray Is Calling For Your Help – Ngataki Finalist in Classic Boat Magazine Restoration of the Year

Good morning folks – I’d like to ask you to spend 2 minutes of your time doing something that could have a big impact on the NZ  marine restoration industry. The legendary classic yacht Ngataki is a finalist (Restoration of the Year – Under 40′) in the prestigious Classic Boat 2015 Awards. Classic Boat Magazine choose their short list (6 only) from around the world & then its up to the classic community to vote on who they think is the winner.

A fact of life is most people are lazy & do not get around to voting – so how about we all rally together & vote for Ngataki. If we win the publicity for the NZ marine trade will be huge.

Other than voting, what more can you do? – on-forwrd the link to this ww page to your friends, family & business associates & ask them to vote.

Ngataki’s category is top of the list so that makes things easy for you & the UK have great privacy laws so unless you tick the ‘Send me stuff’ box they will not make your name or email address available to third parties. BUT you do need to tick the ‘Privacy Policy Acceptance’ box.

CLICK THIS LINK TO VOTE NOW  http://www.classicboat.co.uk/awards2015/

ps the competition is stiff & our girl was designed by Johnny himself so every vote we can get will be needed 🙂