Every so often we get approach to find new custodians for woody craft, mostly it is a pile of firewood but sometimes its gold.
Woody Alistair McRae) owner of Lady Margaret (ex Lady Mary, ex Happy Wanderer) contacted me regarding a 23’ classic open day boat that has been stored under a cover in one of his sheds for a number of years.
Not a lot is known about her past but the exterior of the hull planking has been scraped and pretty much all paint has been removed. The interior and deck has been rebuilt to what appears to be a high standard. There is no motor, steering or wiring. Her beam is 6’9”. With a nice small Yanmar fitted she would be a perfect lake boat or Bay of Islands picnic boat.
All of the hard (and expensive) work has been done – I understand the owner is looking for a buy price of $5,500 – that woodys is a bargain. Buy her, pop in storage until winter, and relaunch in Spring.
I would be amazed if Cam from {the} Slipway Milford doesn’t snap her up, perfect wet day inside work for the team 🙂
Circle Saturday 24th Feb in the diary – the Te Atatu Boating Club are hosting a yard sale – full details in the poster below. Come along and grab a bargain to book a spot to sell your stuff.
The annual Lake Rotoiti Classic & Wooden Boat Parade always attracts a good turn out of the Albatross speed boats, but at last weekends parade we had the biggest turnout in one spot in the Southern Hemisphere. Read below for the local (Lake Rotoiti) on the craft – as told by Richard Stevens.
“Campbell Motors (Queen St Auckland) were the NZ agents. The Beamish-White family at Okataina Lodge had a fleet as “Drive U-Self” hire boats, including a 4-seater with Coventry Climax version of the engine and one of the two seaters had a factory alloy-framed full height 4-pane glass windscreen. They also had a set of hull jigs and did all their own maintenance on site including re- skinning. These boats took a hammering and were eventually replaced by outboard-powered craft. Les Warner ran a small hire fleet from his home at Hinehopu. (I recall as a kid seeing one as a crumpled mess after crashing into the jetty at speed.) There was also a hire fleet on the Rotorua lakefront. These were painted red. One allegedly sank and was never recovered. There was also a fleet at Queenstown. These may have been the remnants of the Rotorua hire fleet. The boat in these fleets may be double-ups. I do not know how many boats there actually were in total. In addition to the Stevensons and ours there were two more on the Lake during the ’60s. One was the Annabel family, the other the McDonalds. (I saw their boat in Auckland a few years ago, complete and painted black)
These boats are the MG Midget of the water. They don’t have excessive power in their standard format, but they are fast, nimble, well designed and beautifully built with excellent handling. They are simple, cheap to run, easy to maintain and, above all, great fun.
These boats have held classic status worldwide for many years now and are highly collectible. It is pleasing to see that they are acknowledged on Rotoiti as part of our boating history.
Addition: Alan Clark owned one here at Lake Rotoiti in the 1950’s.
Addition: Don Wykes and his brother purchased the Rotorua Lakefront business from Judd & Jean Davies in the 70’s. It had the launch Ngaroto (the Davies had this built in England) that took people out to Mokoia Island and had 3 Albatross hire boats: 2x 2 seaters and 1x 4 seater. They were painted Red.
He is able to confirm that one of the 2 seaters sank just short of Mokoia Island, when his worker was heading over to mow the grass. They put a buoy over the oil slick, but when they went back to retrieve it someone had moved the buoy. They sent down 2 divers but were never able to locate it, the water was too murky. He doesn’t recall who he sold the others to, but remembers one of their workers bought one and put a bigger motor in it, a 105 he thinks. “
Below is a gallery of the Albatross craft that participated in the parade – as always click on photos to enlarge. Also scroll down to view yesterdays WW story – 200+ classic and wooden boat photos from the 2024 Lake Rotoiti Classic & Wooden Boat Parade.
Wow what a weekend , stunning weather, so many classic woody boats and as always at Lake Rotoiti – nice people.
Left Auckland at 5.30am to drive down – have to say the new Waikato expressway is so fast BUT so boring as a drive.
Arrived at my hosts Dave and Glenys Wilson lake front residence and collected the on-the-water transport for the day. Had a nice surprise in that the boat came with a skipper – local boatbuilder Alan Craig (Craig Marine) who over the last 10 years has rubbed up against most of the craft floating on the lake. This made my boat buddy – cabin boy, Grant Gibbs redundant but he accepted the demotion to #1 lackey.
After recent parade weekends have been effected by CV19 and weather bombs everyone was hanging out for a special day afloat and we got it in spades.
Todays photo gallery is loosely broken into 3 sections – Mooching About / Parade / Picnic.
Enjoy – if I missed your boat – sorry, next year. Tomorrow I will do a story on the Albatross runabouts that were a major part of the parade – I believe the biggest turnout in the Southern Hemisphere.
A couple of videos below.
REMEMBER – CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE
09-02-2024 UPDATE – Video of the fleet at the Picnic
Master wooden boatbuilder – Colin Brown sent in the above photo of the recent Pahi Regatta. The video ex fb ex Krystal Waller gives us a peek at the on-the-water activity.
Chances are if you are reading this early today , you have missed attending the 2024 Mahurangi Regatta – so todays to give you a heads up about next weekends Lake Rotoiti Classic & Wooden Boat Parade, held every year on Lake Rotoiti in the middle of the North Island – its always an amazing gathering – details here
And here’s an ideally the above 1948 classic 15’ wooden speed boat , drop an engine in and you’ll be on the water for the 2025 parade.
Bay of Islands Summer Mooching + Anniversary Weekend Cruising
Todays gallery of classic wooden craft comes to us from the camera of Dean Wright, taken while he was cruising the bay on his woody – Arethusa.
From top to bottom the craft are:
• Ranoni – Army Bay
• Enterprise – Opunga Cove
• Arohanui – steaming past Cable Bay, Urupukapuka
• Arethusa – Whangamumu
• The Logan yacht – Iorangi – Whangamumu
• Alofa – Whangamumu
• Valhalla – Whangamumu
• Rampage – Whangmumu – an early 2000’s Robertson Boats sedan launch ( lengthened and repainted)
• Mary of York – Ben Tomb’s leeboarder
2024 MAHURANGI REGATTA – Classic Launch Parade & Sunday Gathering At KAWAU ISLAND
The countdown is on for one of the worlds best and biggest classic wooden boating events, the Mahurangi Regatta, organised by the Mahurangi Cruising Club.
Sadly due to the freakish weather the 2023 regatta was cancelled, but plans are in place to make 2024 on-the-water and ashore at Scotts Landing bigger and better.
The Classic Wooden Launch Parade is one of the highlights of the weekends activities – followed later in the day by a serious ‘old school’ boaty BBQ ashore at Scott’s – including a massive marquee for the 20 piece dance band.
On the Sunday, most woody launch skippers head to KAWAU ISLAND and the plan is to gather later in the day for a few sun-downers at the newly refurbished Kawau Boating Club.
CLASSIC WOODYS CRUISING THE HAURAKI GULF – SUMMER 2023/24
Now todays post is the one you have been waiting on – the classic wooden (mostly) craft that I spotted around the Hauraki Gulf over the Dec 27 > Jan 5th period.
Probably the best turn out of woodys that I have seen – seems it just wasn’t me suffering from cabin fever 🙂
As always some photos are good, some not so good – direction of sun and distance dictates that. Mostly I’m taking photos as a visual account.
Enjoy the gallery – broken into locations – I have endeavoured to list the craft in the tagged section.
I hope you all survived New Years eve, these days its always a struggle to last to midnight 🙂
I’ll make a new year prediction – 2024 will be least expensive time to buy a classic wooden boat for the next 5+ years. Prices were very deflated thur-out 2023 but they won’t stay like that – so if a classic craft is something you have on the bucket list – check out the link below. There are others that for privacy reasons do not appear on the list so if you are or are going to be in the market in 2024, let us know. https://waitematawoodys.com/2020/10/16/buying-or-selling-a-classic-boat/
Time for some xmas goodwill – a little quiz with a cool prize. As always entry is ONLY VIA EMAIL, you can only enter once, all correct entries go into the draw. Quiz ends on Friday December 15th at 6pm. Winner announced on WW. (photos shown above random selection only)
THE QUIZ QUESTION: Which boat builder / designer has had the most boat / name mentions on the WW site – email your entry to waitematawoodys@gmail.com
THE PRIZE: A copy of the Best Selling Book – ’Shipwright, Boatbuilder, Yachtsman’ by Gilbert J. Littler + A WW sweatshirt (L/S, size XL only) + A WW Burgee
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