Category Archives: Sub 28′

Kauri Clinker Day Boat

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Kauri Clinker 15’ Day Boat

Looking to get out on the water this summer but do not want the launch?, this 15 kauri clinker day boat could be perfect. She was originally designed and built with an inboard motor.
Beautifully restored with new kauri duckboards, teak rubbing strip etc.
Her custom built trailer must be worth more than the starting bid on trademe (thanks Ian McDonald).

I understand the boat has had little use over the last 4 years so has been shed stored for the majority of this time. May need some sea time to take up as with all clinker boats.
Included -Seagull outboard (purchased as reconditioned 2 years ago.

Her owner has had her for 40 years.

Any Lake Rotoiti woodys looking for another boat 😊

 

 

Cruise To The Riverhead Hotel

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CRUISE TO THE RIVERHEAD HOTEL
If you have not visited the Riverhead Hotel by water, its time you did. The Classic Yacht Association (CYA) has an afternoon cruise to the pub next Sunday (18th). These events are a lot of fun – we head up the river / creek on mass & anchor / raft-up before going ashore for a drink & a catch-up. If you have concerns about the route, just follow the boat in front of you & anchor with the others. There will be plenty of ‘old-hands’ to show you the ropes.
High tide is 16:24pm & so we aim to be heading up the ‘creek’ 2hrs b4 HW, its a small tide at 2.8m so I would imagine we will be meeting up in the Herald Island / Lucus Creek area around 2.00pm, so leaving Westhaven area around 1pm. ETA at pub is 2.30pm & departure from the pub approx 5.30pm.
If you are not a CYA member (yet) come along & see what you have been missing out on.
The photo gallery above is a snap shot of past trips – enjoy.
Ps – Wear your WW shirt 🙂
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Ella B 4 Sale

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ELLA B – 4 Sale
 
I have been contacted by Taupo woody, Shawn Vennell regarding the very smart woody – Ella B.
 
Ella B is a ‘Monte Carlo’ design, barrel-back, classic inboard mahogany run-about. She was built in NZ by Bill Brassington, & measures 24’6” with a 7’6” beam.
The zoom zoom is via a brand new 5.7 litre 350 BFI marine V8 Kodiak engine complete with a Borg Warner 71c model 1.1 velvet drive transmission. The build quality & attention to detail is amazing + all components in the build were brand new, with the trailer being custom made by Bill.
 
Unfortunately due to health issues, Ella B is reluctantly for sale. This is a turn-key boat, fill the tank & you are off. I suspect the seller is very realistic in terms of a price, interested parties can contact Bill’s son Glen, via email  ellaco@xtra.co.nz to discuss Ella B in more detail.
 
Ella B has appeared on WW b4 – more details here.
 

 

Auckland Woody Fishing Fleet

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Auckland Woody Fishing Fleet

Woody Simon Smith sent in the above b/w photos, showcasing some of Auckland’s fishing fleet – registration numbers that I can ID are – 1696 , AK1789 ,  AK29 , & Emerald ?
What do we think the date is? Interesting that there is so many in port at one time.
An Other Block of Flats Contender
My post a few weeks ago on this topic created a lot of chat, the boat below isn’t a woody but it really is closer to an apartment than a boat. You would have to assume that it wasn’t designed by a boatie.
I would be a little bit worried about the boats ratio of above & below the water 😦
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Waitemata Woodys hits 4,000,000 views and celebrates with a gallery of over 100 classic wooden boat photos

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If you think being passionate about wooden boats is niche – think again, there are a lot of us out there. Waitemata Woodys has just passed 4 MILLION views and we celebrate with over 100 classic wooden boating photos

Never in a blue moon when I started this site could I have seen it becoming as popular as it has. Along the way the site has morphed to also become an awesome information source for just about anything connected to wooden boating. Some facts:
4,000,000 views
370,000 people have visited the site, most of them come back – some daily, some weekly, some just when they need to know something
2,469 stories
20,000+ photos published
A 50,000+ photo library
It wouldn’t have happened without in the early days a few fireside chats from people way more worldly in the wooden boating community than myself. The list of people that have shared their family photo albums, stories and knowledge with us is huge and  the site just wouldn’t be what it is today without these people.
I’ve made so many friends, and been fortunate to rub shoulders with a lot of you in person.
So where to from here?, I would be a lier if I said I had not considered pulling the pin a few times, its a big ask publishing a wooden boating story 365 days of the year, but for every one dark day when I’m questioning why I do it – I have 100 days where someone tells me that the first thing they do every every morning is check out Waitemata Woodys, or that they print the stories and once a week when they visit grandad they read them to him, because he is nearly blind, or when we uncover the provenance of someones boat, or when we find someones long lost family boat etc etc
Aside from thanking you all for your support and asking you to keep following Waitemata Woodys – I only have one request – please keep sending us your stories & photos – you may be thinking they won’t mean much to us, but at some stage, someone will send in something and SNAP, they match & we have the makings of a great story. Email them to   waitematawoodys@gmail.com
The following link takes you to a Waitemata Woodys story that epitomises all that’s good about the site – you wouldn’t find content like this anywhere else – it’s gold
And in answer to all the emails re when I will be doing another Waitemata Woodys t-shirt run – the answer is before Christmas, so start saving your pennies. I’ll do another post soon re taking orders 🙂
Again many thanks to everyone. I hope you all still enjoy the site as much as I do pulling it all together. Shortly I will be sharing with you some exciting news on how WW will become even more relevant to wooden boat owners, but for now I have pulled together a random selection of 101 woody photos that have appeared on the site – enjoy 🙂
Alan Houghton – founder
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Aurora – Sailing Sunday

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Aurora

Waiheke Island, March 2018

 

AURORA – Sailing Sunday

The other day I received a note from Bill Brown, the owner of the lovely yacht – Susan Jane, that featured on WW when she was being restored at Colin Brown’s Omaha yard.
Bill is a kiwi but works overseas & was delighted to see that his uncle’s old yacht – Aurora appear on WW (link below) recently. Aurora is a 22′ Harrison Butler design, built & owned by his uncle, Neil Brown c.1940’s.
Bill’s father, James Brown, a salty old dog who spent most of his time going up and down the Whangarei Harbour, in various craft, including Woodys; Sarina, (currently for sale, and whom mum and dad had their honeymoon on) Temptress and Yvonne. James passed away last April, just a few days shy of 90, having sailed his entire life, and selling his last boat at the grand old age of 80.
The timing of the WW story on Aurora was very opportune as Bill had recently been canvassing the extended family for  details – with Bill’s permission I have published below the email he sent out – its an great read. Enjoy.
“I saw Aurora for sale on Trademe yesterday and I thought you might be interested in seeing these pictures of her. As far as I know Uncle Neil built her himself in Dunedin to a Norwegian design. Dad used to tell me she was built like a brick outhouse and you can see that even though she is clearly neglected, she is still a tight wee ship! The photos and advertisement make her seem much bigger than she is. I think she is only 21 feet long, making her essentially the size of a trailer sailor!
Most of you know that Uncle Neil sailed her in the famous Wellington to Lyttelton yacht race that was at the time one of New Zealand’s worst sailing tragedies. That was perhaps the first, but not the last time, that old Gran thought Uncle Neil had been lost at sea!
If I remember correctly, dad used to say that Uncle Neil ran before the storm with bare poles and with a spare anchor warp streaming out the stern. As it states in the article he eventually ended up in clear skies up off the coast of the Hawkes Bay.
The other great story I remember about Aurora that was more directly connected to dad, was that Uncle Neil asked if dad wanted to go on a summer cruise from Dunedin to Auckland to coincide with the Queen’s visit in 1953-1954. Dad said yes and that was the plan they told Gran, however when they cleared the Otago Heads Uncle Neil kept heading east! It wasn’t till then that he told dad that they were aiming to be the first pleasure yacht to visit the Chatham Islands post WW2! Uncle Neil figured that if he had told dad the truth he wouldn’t have said yes and Gran would have worried too much. I remember dad had a handwritten log of the voyage, boasting of the huge crayfish they ate when they finally arrived at Waitangi, Chatham Islands. After a few days socialising with the locals they then set a course for Auckland to visit the Queen!
I have seen her only twice in the real flesh. Once she was waiting outside the Kissing Point Boatshed that we kept the launch Yvonne in. We were returning from a weekend down the Whangarei Harbour and the owner had tracked dad down to have a chat with him about her history. I think she was then based in Tauranga. The second time I spied her she was on a swing mooring in the Tamaki River.  I was at University and I had been out windsurfing and noticed her and that there was a guy in the cockpit. I stopped at her stern and explained that my uncle had built her and found out that the guy in the cockpit was readying her for sale, as her owner had been in some trouble picking up the mooring, bouncing off a few boats in the tide and had suffered a heart attack!
Uncle Neil’s second major build was the modified Woollacott – Katherine Anne, Maraval (photo below), which he built in Whangarei, at Smiths boatyard and sailed around the South Pacific and the east coast of Australia, ending up back in Dunedin. I heard that he received a RNZYS Blue Water Cruising Award for this effort, but I can’t seem to find much evidence of that. An interesting aside to this cruise was when I sailed in the Farr 9.2 Interdominion series in Perth Australia, there was a crew from Wellington, who recounted a story of Uncle Neil on Maraval being in Hobart at the same time as the finish of the Sydney- Hobart Yacht Race that they had just competed in a fully powered up ocean racing yacht. Apparently as the story goes, they left Hobart together and Uncle Neil beat them back across the Tasman!
Back in Dunedin, for summer holidays Uncle Neil would head around to Fiordland, down to Stewart Island, even on one occasion venturing to the Campbell and Auckland islands.  Sometimes just for the heck of it he would throw in a circumnavigation of the South Island. On one occasion he lost Maraval, when she was washed out to see by a flood, after sheltering in Port Jackson, Jackson Bay, West Coast, only for Maraval to float out into the Tasman and a few weeks later return on to a piece of sandy West Coast beach up by Greymouth! The only reported damage to her was the broken mast and the front bollard that the farmer had tied his tow rope to as he hauled her up the beach! He re-floated her, had her towed by a fishing boat to Greymouth, built a new mast and went on his way back to Dunedin.”
Link to previous WW story on Aurora, below
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Maraval at Takamatua, Banks Peninsula

Aries

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ARIES

Aries is a 26’ Roy Parris launch, launched in 1962. She has a kauri hull & mahogany topsides.

Her zoom zoom comes via a Perkins 4-108 diesel.
She is listed on trademe (thanks Ian McDonald) & while she has recently had some TCL to the cabin sides she stills require finishing off.
Her reserve (starting bid) is $500, so there could be a bargain entry level woody to be had here 🙂

Mystery Whangarei Launch

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Mystery Whangarei Launch

Today’s launch, if you believe the trademe listing (thx Ian McDonald) is a 26’ ‘Bayee Low’, built in 1960. He rhull is kauri carvel.

Zoom zoom is from a 60hp Isuzu diesel.

Do we know any more about her?

 

2018 Classic Yacht & Launch Exhibition – The New Zealand Sailing Dinghy

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2018 Classic Yacht & Launch Exhibition – The New Zealand Sailing Dinghy

This years Classic Yacht & Launch Exhibition, hosted by Tino Rawa Trust, at Karanga Plaza in Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter, was a 3 day celebration of the New Zealand Sailing Dinghy.
The event showcased many of the successful designs that created our world class sailors & formed the backbone of your sailing clubs.
I went along on Friday morning to the opening morning tea 🙂 & rubbed shoulders with some of our wooden boating legends, these morning teas are always a special treat. We were entertained by another of Robert Brookes talks – always beautiful delivered & an entertaining insight into Auckland’s sailing past. If you have not seen Robert’s & the Brooke families latest book ‘Memories – Roads of Destiny’ (WW link below) grab a copy at Boat Books in Westhaven – its a must have / read.
I’ll let the photos tell the story of the show – enjoy.
Brooke Book Link

Matariki

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Matariki
This 16′ launch has got Lake Rotoiti written all over her. With a build year of 1973, the only reason she gets to make an appearance on WW is her very salty looks.
Her trademe listing (thanks Ian McDonald) states she was built by A. Westrupp in double diagonal timber & then glassed.
Zoom zoom is from a rebuilt MTU 30hp diesel that sees her cruising at 5 knots. Included is a road trailer, so easily re-locatable from her current home in the Marlborough Sounds.
Ps Nice ass 🙂
And below, something to watch while you are having your morning brew. The video tells the story of the re-launch of the British speedster Bluebird, its a great watch & a just shows what can be achieved when people have a vision.