Back in June 2014 WW was approached with a request for intel on the 28’ kauri planked classic launch – Kotare, that is a poplar name for boats, so I was surprised at what we uncovered.
At the time Harold Kidd was able to tell us that she was designed by Bill Couldrey in 1960 for Frank Wilkins of Church St., Northcote to build for himself. Wilkins launched her in October 1961 with a 45hp BMC diesel.
Fast forward again to the present day and as you will observe in the above photos – Kotare is being restored / refitted by sage boat builder Alan Craig and his team at Craig Marine.
The 32’ Lake Rotoiti based launch – Manowai has been owned by a string of owners that have lavished time and $$ on her. That we know of, this started around 2003 when boat builder Colin Brown undertook major refit, including new interior. Fast forward to 2015 and Manowai has been relocated to Lake Rotoiti (Nth Island) and spends a year in Craig Marines shed where boat builder Alan Craig undertakes a 12 month refurbishment of her interior & exterior. At the same time she was re-powered with a 4 cyl. 40 hp Lombardini diesel.
Now in 2022 she has just emerged from Alan Craig’s shed after some serious TLC and addressed some issues with the steel screws used in her construction. Links below to previous WW stories – lots of photos and chat.
Manowai’s past is a little cloudy but she was possibly built in 1921 by Bailey & Lowe – would be nice to be able to confirm her provenance.
Our friends at the Australian Wood Boat Festival have just released another film in the ‘Boat Folk’ series.
Todays one is on the 1947 Tasmanian built 43′ yacht – Westward.
Westward started life designed as a recreational fishing yacht but prior to completion was converted to a racing yacht. Quite a successful one – winning the 1947 and 1948 Sydney > Hobart race.
After a long life of extended cruising Westward was donated to the Maritime Museum of Tasmania. These days she is back home in her home state and has been restored as a floating exhibit at the Constitution Dock in Hobart.
Earlier in the week I was visiting Thames and popped into the Thames Sailing Club marina, as mentioned the other day, first time when the tides been in – certainly has a different feel when all the woodys are floating 🙂
I went for a wander around the docks and spied the above bridge-decker – no name and crying out for some serious TLC, you could land a helicopter on the duck board.
One feature stood out – no windows on the port-side aft cabin, intentional? Or just never got around to fitting them?
I get back to Auckland and I’m showing the Thames photos to a woody mate and they tell me it may have changed hands and be joining its new owner’s armada in Auckland …………..
Can we put a name and some history to the craft?
INPUT ex Mark McLaughlin – This is KAKARIKI (launched as GEORGELLA). She is one of the three remaining Norm Beetson designed “four sisters” which have all featured previously on WW.
Todays photos were sent in by Mike Mulligan and are of his families old launch Patina which his father sold to buy the launch Ngaranui (tomorrows story) in the 1970’s
The 39’ Patina was built by Erine Lane at Picton in 1913, from double planked kauri. Lane built her for C.W. Philpotts of the Sounds Motor Launch Co. as a passenger vessel. Originally named La Reine (The Queen).
As launched she was fitted with a 20hp Bolinder semi-diesel reversing engine. Late she went fishing out of New Plymouth with a Fairbanks- Morse and also spent time in Tauranga. Around this time she was converted to pleasure use.
In Sept 2019 she was for sale at Chaffers marina, Wellington.In Feb 2020 she was still for sale – photos below and here – https://waitematawoodys.com/2020/02/29/patina-2/
I have been meaning to write this story for a long time – one of my biggest frustrations with the classic wooden boating movement is that a lot of classic boat owners have this line on auto play when invited to a classic woody gathering – “I’ll attend when I have finished doing up the boat” – FACT: 95% of us never finish ‘doing up the boat’ – its a rolling project.
In the mean time woodys are missing out on catching up with other like minded human beings to – socialise, get advice, swap ideas and most importantly – using their boat.
A couple of weekends ago at Clevedon I was reminded of why we come together when one of the boat owners commented to me how much they appreciated that everyone opened up their boats and invited people on board for a chat. This allowed them to gathering ideas for their own project.
It’s not just dock-side blather – at Clevedon we had woody boat owners there that had the following industry experience – boat building, sail maker, rigger, canopy fabricator, marine insurance consultant and marine brokerage. You can’t access / buy that resource in one place anywhere.
Todays woody is the launch Ngarimu from Thames, been owned by Bruce Rowe for 10+ years and soon to be hauled out and taken home for some serious TLC. Bruce has made the long haul from Thames marina to attend several Woodys events – Riverhead, Clevedon and Paeroa. Each trip the experience helps him get closer to starting the big project.
UPDATE – In Thames today – photo below very ‘fresh’, first time I’vee been there with the tide in 🙂
So woodys – ditch the Woody events are a beauty pageant attitude and just join in – you won’t regret it 🙂
Below I talk about why I started the WW weblog and the spirit behind it.
Whats the waitematawoodys website all about
Dedicated to the study and appreciation of classic wooden boats. WW was founded upon a desire to tell the stories and a need to the archive history of our classic wooden boats, the craftsman who built them & characters that owned and crewed on them. Visiting this blog is like a bunch of people in the boat club bar, there will be stuff discussed you know, stuff you know nothing about and stuff you want to know more about. That’s what waitematawoodys is about – gathering stories, photos, history, reminiscences.
This a great story with a long tail. I first rubbed up against the boat back in 2009 when a co Kiwi based – WoodenBoat Forum follower named Graeme Tearle, lived in Thames, mentioned online he was considering buying a Townson 22 – known as a Pied Piper (Piedy) on trademe in Auckland. Turns out it was sitting on the hard at the Devonport Yacht Club (I was a member back then) so I took some photos for him. Graeme bought the boat, below is an edit of his postings on the WBF, he has a unique style of chat and the yanks on the WBF loved him –
“But this boat has issues. For starters, her name. “Born Slippery”. Ye Gods, whatever was he thinking. So my daughter Abby came up with a new name. “Ceilidh”. Pronounced “kay-lee” it is Irish (or Scots) for an informal get-together featuring traditional song, dance and drinking. In other words, a party. My kind of party (I’m half Irish). Perfect. Next, her cabin shape is all wrong. Ceilidh has the original, shorter roof, which designer Des Townson lengthened when he redrew it, and I suspect he may have lowered the roofline an inch when he did so. Either way, Ceilidh’s cabin is too short & too high for my tastes. If you can’t stand upright in a boat, there is little point in adding an inch or two to the roof height and you still can’t stand up. It just spoils the aesthetics. Also the cabintop is built in the original style with internal roof beams & a 9mm ply skin. The new style has a laminated roof with no beams. This is vastly preferable; nothing to hit your head on & a much easier paint job. So the whole cabin top has to come off. This has the added bonus of allowing me standing room inside while I do the rebuild, and I can replace the ply coamings with varnished mahogany, as they were with Candyfloss (a previous Piedy he built) In my own personal, very biased, opinion, such a beautiful shape deserves nothing less.
The cockpit has been hacked about in the modern way with an open transom. I will fill the transom back in again & add an aft deck forward to the mainsheet traveler, then an aft coaming across it, aft of the traveler. There can be no lazarette here as the rudder shaft comes up thru the cockpit floor aft of the traveler, making a bulkhead impossible. Also, she has a rise in the companionway of about 300mm, to stop water entering the saloon should the cockpit flood. What absolute nonsense. This is the Hauraki Gulf guys, the best cruising grounds in the world, not Cape Horn. I’ll cut it out, fit a lintel about 50mm high, and should the weather become so severe that I fear a wave might jump into the cockpit, (yeah right, it is sooo going to happen) I’ll fit the first washboard & lock it in place. The ability to easily step thru the companionway without having to clamber over what amounts to a bridgedeck is a boon beyond measure on a cruise. The existing tiller is an ugly stick. I’ll build a new, properly shaped one.”
Graeme did an amazing job restoring the yacht (sadly all the work-in-progress photos on WBF have been lost) and bought Ceilidh by road up to Auckland for a Des Townson exhibition at the Viaduct and motor sailed her back to Thames – memory is hazy but I think I lent him a life jacket and a VHF radio for the trip. Graeme’s past post on the WBF was c.July 2014 and I think he sold the boat in June 2014.
Fast forward to mid July 2022 and the son of old family friends – Gavin Woodward tracked the boat down to a mud berth in Thames and was trying locate the owner, dockside chat was that she had been abandoned. Photos below showing Ceilidh looking very sad.
Fast forward to mid September 2022 and Andrew Sander – a previous owner of the boat , tracked her down and re-bought her. Andrews words “Spent Sunday preparing and Sunday night on the high tide dragging her from her mangrove and rat infested grave, she’s now in a berth in Thames Marina. Her next adventure is going to Tauranga for cosmetic work, a weight loss program and a new set of sails. Then it’s back to Auckland to catch up with her old Piedy mates where she will live. Looking forward to some great racing and antics. Get a Piedy up ya (again)”
Photos below of the extraction at Thames.Wonderful that these iconic craft are held in such high regard that yachties go to these lengths to keep them sailing.
ANYONE GOT A POT OF THIS WOODY PRODUCT?
Steam boat woody – Russell Ward contacted me as Russell and some of his fellow steam boaters are bemoaning the loss of Davis Slick Seam. The trailer boaters swear by it. It holds the leaks until the seams take up and it squeezes out -doesn’t set. Stops the incontinence when you launch.
Anyone got a spare tin or know what might have been in it? It was black, had some waxy filler apparently, stayed put and wouldn’t go hard. It is no longer being stocked. West are not answering emails, it is obviously not a big seller.
So woodys what would have been in it -NO EPOXY but maybe some of the filler they use. But it was tarry looking.
The launch Seaforth has made a couple of appearances on WW, links below to those stories – the 2015 one has lots of chat and photos.
Woody John Dawson sent in the above photos ex Gareth Dawson and commented that Seaforth had been recently hauled out at Stillwater Boating Club. Fingers crossed she receives the attention she deserves, having spent the last decade looking very sad, either hanging off a Orakei swing mooring or on the hard at Clevedon. Rumour has it she is also a member of the sub mariners club i.e. she sank once on her mooring 😦
Do we know what the plan is? SBC isn’t a yard that allows the ‘parking’ of old boats so she may have changes owners. The photo below is c.1986
09-04-2023 – Update ec Mikaela Thwaites (owner) – I am the new owner of Seaforth, I am 22 years old and have gotten into boating since my dad introduced me to the lifestyle. I saw her on Marketplace in early September looking a bit sad sitting on the hard in Clevedon. Something about her intrigued me and I knew I just had to have her. My father and I picked her up in Clevedon and took her to be worked on in Stillwater. We have put months of work into her and my dad re-did the caulking, antifouling and we re-did the painting too. We started from scratch. I chose a blue colour for her that really stands out. She has been stripped on the inside as I am planning on revamping the entire exterior and putting the same love into the inside too. She was put back into the water in March and is hardly taking in any water after all the work has been put into her. She absolutely comes to life in the water and she is admired by many.
Today’s story is another example of the effectiveness of WW – Grant Parker yesterday posted a comment on a WW story that appeared back in Oct 2014 – the 2014 story was on the c.1962 McGeady built launch – Challenger.
I have reproduced Grant’s comments below,
“The 38ft ” Challenger built by McGeady. was owned by my family in Tauranga in the late 1970’s > early 1980’s. After the Bradshaw family of Rotorua owned her she was sold to the Finn family also from Rotorua.
My father Bert Parker from Rotorua purchased the Challenger from Ray Finn. When he sold her she went to Havelock in the Marlborough Sounds where an older couple lived on her for a number of years.
The next owner was the owner of a trucking company in Nelson, he went bankrupt and she was sold again. The last I heard was she ended up North, maybe Bay of Islands, possibly the Opua area.
Our family had some great memories, the photos above of – Challenger, show her in her former glory with varnished coamings etc.
The photos show Challenger in : downtown Tauranga, Whale Island off Whakatane and South East Bay Mayor Island.”
Grant maintained an interest in the whereabouts of Challenger and once tracked her down in Havelock, then the ship broker in Nelson supplied the copy of her 4sale listing.
Purely from reference as to how our classics can morph over time and owners – I know which one I’d like to own 🙂
On the weekends Woodys Classic Weekend cruise to the Clevedon Cruising Club I had the services of a cabin boy (relax, he’s my neibour) so I handed the wheel to him for most of the trip up the river. This freed me up to snap some of the moored wooden craft, I’m sure a few might be f/glass or even steel – but still an amazing collection ’semi-hidden’ away, that us Auckland marina dwellers never see.
Enjoy the tour. AND make sure you check out the last photo below – seems the CYA A Class skippers have been playing bumper boats again.
Seems the CYA Classic A Class Fleet Are Playing Crash & Bash Again
One of the classic launch owners returning to their berth in Westhaven from the weekends Woodys Clevedon cruise – spotted a wee hole in Little Jim. Comment was it had the dimensions of a bow-sprite.
Fingers crossed the culprit has good insurance………… A review of the RNZYS results page for Saturdays racing shows two classics with a DNF alongside their names – being Little Jim and Rawene, chances are that tells you the other vessel.
Things like this probably contribute to why only approx. 6% of the CYA classic yacht fleet race (outside of one-off events like the Mahurangi Regatta) their craft. Too much testosterone is a bad thing with a car steering wheel or yacht tiller in your hand – then again maybe it was too much oestrogen this time?
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