DEFIANT — A RATHER MAGNIFICENT CLASSIC WOODEN LAUNCH
On one of my recent trip north I spotted a rather impressive woody hauled out at in Whangarei named DEFIANT. Hard not to miss her given her size.I had a brief phone chat with her owner Mike, and was given the green light to go aboard. Mike went to great lengths to tell me she was a tip inside as he was part way thru an upgrade project.
Excuse the quality of some of the photos, as I edited them to remove WIP clutter.
First impressions of DEFIANT is her overall size , she is huge. As a guide in the photos you can see some ‘LazyBoy’ armchairs – there are 4 in the saloon and they are the full domestic size.
Keen to learn more about her – but for now – designed by Nick Peel, I think 54’ in length, powered by a Gardner engine (possibly 150hp).Home port is Whangaroa, Northland.
There are a few ‘hard to achieve’ things in classic boat design – one is to create a motorsailer that doesn’t look like a compromise between a yacht and a motor boat and second to create a craft 30’ or less that to the eye looks proportional correct and visually appealing. Most get it wrong.
On a recent web forage on the Wooden Boats of Tasmania fb I came across todays woody that straightaway caught my eye.
The boats name is HUON KELLy and is a design by Terry Lean and tagged ‘Cloudy Bay 30’, built in Tasmania at the Wooden Boat Center in Franklin c.2005/6. The fb poster, Andy Mac, commented that 4 sister craft were built between 2005 >2011.
A quick google search popped up a broker video , link below, from 6 years ago when she was for sale in Sydney. Check it out, a very impressive woody packed with everything you would want aboard but discreetly hidden to give a heritage look.
During the week WW was contacted by John Spooner concerning his 35′ yacht – GLOWWORM. Built in 1971 by master boat builder Lionel Jefcoat to a Cox design.
As we can see from the photos GLOWWORM is a very salty looking vessel and wouldn’t be afraid of the odd blue water wave, probably GOOD THING GIVEN HER HOME PORT IS WELLINGTON.
Check out the stove, would be very cosy down below at anchor.
Today again thanks for Robyn Kellian and Tobias Forsyth we get to see another launch from the Leigh region. No name is visible but the photo is tagged – Gav Perry. The photo was taken on 31-01-1994.
The shed / yard appears to be at Whangateau, back when it was a public facility controlled by Russell Ward and used by the local boating community.
Can we learn more about the vessel, has a slight workboat look to her.
There have been several magic bullet moments in the history of waitematawoodys, actions that had significant impacts on the readership numbers. The most significant was an international phone call, now I tend to ignore these calls as normally it is some self titled investment guru wanting to share a once in a lifetime investment opportunity with me. For some unknown reason I took the call and it was a gent named Carl Cramer, who introduced himself as the Publisher of WoodenBoat magazine in the USA, that got my attention pretty quick.
Carl told me he and the founding publisher / owner of WB – Jon Wilson, had been chatting on the phone, bored senseless after being snowed in for 3 days. As they were talking Jon Wilson was trolling the web looking for sunny wooden boating content – bingo Jon hit on the waitematawoodys site and the story of the day was my coverage of the 3 day Mahurangi Regatta weekend. Over 200 photos and videos, Carl told me Jon suggested he make contact – which led to our telephone call. Back then WB was print only and a very popular on-line forum, so he was impressed with this new-ish blog format. Carl used to send a short, chatty weekly email out to the WB magazine subscribers, we talking 50,000+ – he asked if he could do a story on waitematawoodys. The story was a cracker and started with being snowed in and getting an infusion of summer boating that cured his cabin fever. He finished by saying.“This website is truely great” Overnight the WW viewing numbers went into orbit, from around the world and we still retain a high % of them. In fact the USA is number 2 on the readers list.
Sorry for the long lead in to todays WW story. Over the years I have read several features on how Jon Wilson founded the WB group but over the weekend I stumbled on a YouTube channel named ‘LIFE ON THE WATER’ – one of the featured videos is titled ‘Jon Wilson – The Restorer’s Journey’. In their words it is is a cinematic portrait of the man who took on a monumental task to change the course of wooden boat history. I haven’t come across a better insight, explanation on this bug we all suffer from. Read it, I promise afterwards you’ll feel better about life and your classic wooden boat.
HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT – WELLINGTON’S CLASSIC WOODEN CRAFT
I’m guilty of a lapse that a lot of us northern woodys fall into – that being, we forget about NZ’s capital city Wellington as a home to some of our best classic wooden craft.
Auckland, the Bay of Islands and the top of the South Island tend to dominate WW content. So it was so good to receive a trip report from Auckland based woody Geoff Fiebig (SV CAPLIN) from Chaffers marina in Wellington.
The next woody is the 26’ 1925 Colin Wild built launch – LITTLE TASMAN, another woody that slipped thru our hands and headed south. Not before an amazing restoration at the hands of Colin Brown and Josh Hawkw at their Omaha yard. Check out this WW link and view the video of the project. https://waitematawoodys.com/2022/06/17/little-tasman-restoration/
Lastly we have the 1964 Ben Hipkins built 50’ bridge decker – RANGIORA looking the best she has in a long time – well done to her owners.
As we enter mid-winter I thought an injection of sun and sapphire blue water might be appropriate.
Yesterday Maurice Bryham, owner of the classic woody – IONA II sent in todays gallery of photos from Côte d’Azur (southwest corner of France)
Maurice commented – ‘some wooden boat photos from Villefranche-sur-Mer on the Med. Great to see so many wooden boats being well looked after. Still some traditional boat yards too.
The wooden fishing boats are still in good use. The brother and sister caught those fish at 7am-8am with their dad and then selling them on the foreshore at 9am with their boat in the background.
I regularly rave on about the virtues of the USA based video blog – OFF CENTER HARBOR, it is subscription based but if you need an example of value for money check out this video on the building of the plank-on-frame wooden launch – MAGGIE-ANN.
Todays video is a snapshot of the projects, accumulating with launch day. OCH ran a 44 part series on master boat builder Peter Buxton’s A>Z build.
This video is just one of over 500 in the library that subscribers have access to. OCH is the worlds leading reference tool for advice, direction and enlightenment for everything wooden boating.
Back in 2024 the 44’ classic wooden workboat TENACITY was for sale in Nelson as a commercial fishing boat , but the suggestion was she had the bones to make a good recreational cruiser.
At the time we learnt she was a Jack Guard design, built in 1988 from kauri and was powered by a 150hp Gardner 6L3B engine.
Todays woody question is did she sell, and if so did she remain in commercial work or get converted to recreational use.
While using the WW search box yesterday for the SOS – SOUTHERN MAID story I typed in SOS and was amazed how many WW stories had SOS in the headline of text (selection above)
Ata glance not many of them were saved. The common denominator was lack of timing, in most cases WW was contacted with less than 24hrs notice of an appointment with a back-hoe.
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