I was subsequently contacted by John Bullivant who supplied the above photos of Meteor III. John advised that his research uncovered that all of the Metero’s (1 / II / III) were owned by Frank Haworth, who ran a very successful tourism business in Queenstown in the 1950’s>1960’s.
It is believed that Meteor III was NZ’s first hydrofoil , but built in the UK. Meteor III cruised at 55 kph and topped out at over 70kph.
I understand that she operated on the lake until the mid 1990’s, but these days is run by a charitable trust and occasionally comes out of retirement.
When she first hit the lake in the 1950’s, based on the photos it must have been an impressive sight.
Had a wonderful response to Mondays story asking for help locating a source of kauri for the rebuild of the fire damaged classic launch – Kokoru. Currently fine tuning the exact requirements and will be back in touch with the good folk that reached out with potential solutions 🙂
EASTER – Looking To Do Something Special
On behalf of WW – Jason Prew has been pulling together an amazing Easter cruise. The plan is to cruise up the Waihou River to the township of Paeroa for the weekend. To ensure a safe passage up the river there will be a local woody piloting.
Due to space restraints the guest list is limited to 12 boats – and as of today there are only 2>3 vacant spots.
Cruising experiences like this trip are rare so contact Jason jason@slipway.co.nz for more details and to grab a spot.
Weekend Overview:
Easter Friday > Meet at Thames / Kopu bridge. Travel in convoy to Paeroa
Saturday > do the “tourist things” Museum visit, shops etc
Sunday > return down river in afternoon
Sunday night / Monday > free to do your own thing
Part of the weekend will be a visit to the Paeroa Historic Maritime Museum and Park (you’ll be moored in front), the venue is one of the best displays of NZ and local maritime history including Captain Cook, The Northern Steamship Co., Naval displays and many scale replicas of vessels.
At the recent CYA round Rangitoto race > cake day > BBQ one of the participating launches was the c.1953 Bill Waters built 34′ bridge decker – Gay Dawn. Gay Dawn has made several appearances on WW, links below, but today we get to also see her underway. Gay Dawn is built like a brick outhouse – carvel planked kauri, hardwood ribs and a pohutukawa stem.
Forward motion comes via a Ford 120hp diesel engine, that delivers an impressive turn of speed.
After a spell in the Bay of Plenty (Tauranga) GD is back home in Auckland.
Update 11-04-2022 Please to see that Gay Dawn has lost the bow rail (ex a Haines Hunter?) – looks very cool nude. Fingers crossed its a permanent thing 🙂
WOODYS RIVERHEAD TAVERN LAUNCH CRUISE – THIS SATURDAY (26th)
Where it started – if only the wind had been blowing the other way
KOKORU RAVAGED IN MARINA FIRE – A CALL FOR HELP
Late on the afternoon of 14-03-2022 I started receiving messages from woodys about a fire at east Aucklands – Pine Harbour Marina , that was / had desecrated 5 vessels. Looking at the early photos coming thru on social media – one of the vessels appeared to be a classic launch. Within minutes another image appeared that clearly showed that the woody was the 1960 Jack Morgan built 38′ woody – Kokoru. A woody that less than 4 weeks before I was crawling over taking photos of, post a 18+ month restoration that included her owners spending most of the CV-19 lockdowns working on her. On that day do not think I have seen more proud and happy boat owners and a week later they attended the Woodys Picnic at Stillwater and Kokoru was rafted up on the wharf for everyone to view.
While taking photos the owners asked that I just use only a few exterior ones on WW and that when she was 100% dressed up, I could reveal more. Well woodys sadly that day never came, as Kokoru was one of the vessels at Pine Harbour that through no fault of their own, was left in ruins by an onboard fire on a neighbouring boat – with the combined size of the insurance claim being seven+ figures I won’t speculate, other to say the dockside chat is that the explosion > fire was related to a battery installation.
I posted one photo of Kokoru the following day, but in respect to her owners, refrained from showing more.
Last Friday talking with the owners, who are still distressed with the whole affair, I was thrilled to be told that the decision had been made to rebuild Kokoru – a mammoth undertaking, that has some big hurdles upfront – the first being – where to find the kauri, that magical timber that sadly these days you can not just order from Placemakers.
So woodys todays story has two parts:
(1) to congratulate the owners on making the rebuild call – to quote them “you can’t take it with you but you can leave a legacy”
(2)to shout out to the classic wooden boating community for a source for the kauri Kokoru needs – which is approx 8 lengths approx 150mm x ideally 8 metres. But beggars can’t be choosers so it’s what ever can be found. Obviously prepared to pay – any ideas on who we can talk to – contact me onwaitematawoodys@gmail.com
Kokoru has made several appearances on WW before so I have included the links below to her back story. Its interesting to read that she is no stranger to incidents that would have been the end of most modern day vessels – back on 10th April 1968 during Wellington’s Wahine ferry disaster (loss of 51 lives on the day), Kokoru was one of the vessels that went out to assist the rescue of the passengers – after returning one load she headed out again and was rolled on her beam by a monster wave, the force of which ripped one of engines from its bed. Kokoru limped back to port, taking on water. But as a testament to Jack Morgan’s boat building skills, Kokoru was hauled out and repaired.
The gallery of photos below are reproduced purely as a record of the craftsmanship and mastery that went into the refit of Kokoru and to provide inspiration and reference during the rebuild. As always click on photos to enlarge.
On morning of 13th March Dean Wright spotted the above yacht off Moturua Island in the BOI.
A mystery to Dean and myself – can anyone put a name to the boat and tell us about her?
Input from John Bertenshaw. -the mystery schooner is Regulus , a William Hand design originally from San Francisco. Its been in the bay for some here. Circa 1928 build or so IIRC. Photo below
The Mence armada, below, sharing the Slipway at Milford this week 😉
Jeanne & Eileen Patricia
The Balmain Bug
Hugh Gladwell sent in the above YouTube link to a very cool video on the Australian Balmain Bug – the six foot skiffs that hav been racing on Sydney Harbour for over 130 years. As Hugh joked – perfect for someone wanting to get into classic yachting without the marina fees 🙂
Back in Sept 2015 we featured the launch Tauraka on WW, I had photographed the 32′ launch several times at the Lake Rotoiti Classic & Wooden Boat Parade. Sadly Tauraka has been allowed to deterrent over the last few years, but at ‘free-to-a-good-home’ Tauraka would be a great project.
Photo sent in by Rob Watt, showing her moored in the Okere Arm of Lake Rotoiti. Owner contact malcolm.mcnicol@gmail.com
Input From Paul Drake – TAURAKA’s story brought back memories of 50 years ago when we got hold of ROMANCE. The photos below of before and after of ROMANCE might inspire some keen young person to give it a go with TAURAKA.
Recently I was contacted by Pat Menzies the youngest son of Clive Menzies who bought the launch Menai from Arnold Baldwin. In a previous WW story Harold Kidd refers to Clive as ‘C.B. Menzies’, link to that story below. After reading the numerous WW stories on Menai, Pat decided to share a little more information that he hopes may be of interest to us. It is a good yarn so I’ll hand over to Pat and let him tell the story. https://waitematawoodys.com/2013/09/02/menai-valsan-her-owners/
“First, a little background about Arnold Baldwin “Baldie” to his friends (unsurprisingly). He is referred to as “involerd in the paper and printing industry”. But he was a bit more significant than that. Born in Canada, he emigrated to New Zealand some time pre-war and founded Universal Business Directories Ltd. By the 1950s and continuing through most of the next half-century UBD’s metropolitan provincial editions were the first place to look for detailed information about businesses of all and any sorts and the advertising revenue they engendered had made Baldie quite a rich man. Very rich by the standards of the day. I presume he must have been in the RNZ Volunteer Reseve pre-war and was appointed skipper of the Menai during the war years when it was commandeered the Navy and put to Coastal Patrol duties. (I believe that virtually every harbour which had a fleet of launches had some commandeered by the Navy for this purpose, but the Menai is the only one I know about. After the war I understand Mr Reynolds, the original owner did not want it back and Arnold was able to buy it. By the late 40s he was looking for a bigger boat and bought the Valsan, selling the Menai to my father.
Dad and Arnold were at the time (and for a number of years thereafter) flag officers of the Auckland Motor Yacht Club and were able to organise the various transfers to suit their calendars and cash flow. Dad sold the “Taufale” a 28 footer launch which he had bought in 1944 (I think. May have been 1945.) I was only about 5 at the time so my memory of such details is non-existent.
Dad owned the Menai through to some time in the early 1960s when he sold it to a then well-known local architect – surname Dalton. I did know his first name but have long since forgotten it. He, after quite a short period on-sold it to Alan (I think) Martin who was at the time CEO of TVNZ Auckland and did a lot of work on the boat. It then went through a number of owners before Peter Smith bought it and turned it into the film star beauty she is now.
The reference to Horry Whimp as an owner is quite mysterious. He was, as stated, the manager of the UBD printing works, had worked for Arnold for many years and had the perk of being boat husband, first for the Menai and later for the Valsan. It could very well be that Horry had the use of the Menai over the 48-49 season while Dad and Arnold were trading their paths to each owning only one boat – and that Ken Ricketts (who is/was a couple of years older than me) simply assumed he owned it.
Menai was powered by a flathead Ford V8 with a marine conversion by OSCA, rated at 100hp. Whether that was as a car motor or marine I don’t know. It had a 2 to 1 reduction box and we cruised at 1750rpm on the rev counter. Dad went through about three propellers and numerous re-pitchings and re-cuppings and finally achieved claimed figures of cruising speed of about 6.5 knots and petrol consumption of 1 3/4 gallons per hour. Pushing it up to 7 or 7.5 knots resulted in it squatting at the stern (“digging a big hole in the water” Dad used to say) and consumption soaring to about 4 gallons/hour.
Dad also fitted a Ford 8 auxiliary motor following a rather nasty experience when the motor stalled (a scale of rust in the fuel line, I believe) and left us powerless on a lee shore, either down the Bottom End or over on the Coromandel. I was about 11 or 12 and getting ready to drop the 45lb big pick when the motor fired up again. He also fitted another smaller motor to charge the batteries so we didn’t have to go cruising to have electricity. He also fitted a gas powered freezer box under the starboard seat in the bridgedeck. Larger boats such as the Valsan generally had such facilities but the Menai was well up-to-date for its age and size. One of the perks of being one of Arnold’s friends was that ownership of the Valsan came with one of the boatsheds on Ngapipi Rd – the third from Tamaki Drive. Arnold ran a tight timetable. He had the shed from about Easter to near to Queen’s Birthday and then Dad and several other of his friends each had about 2 weeks or so, during which we worked hard to complete the season’s maintenance. Dad would go to the shed each evening direct from work and I would pitch on at the weekends working from dawn to as late as we needed. I remember varnishing the coamings in half-light of a winter evening was a truly awful task. But better than doing it in the open at Vos Bros or any other shipyard. At least we didn’t have dust to contend with”.
Last week Clive Ross asked on WW if anyone knew of the launch Aloha has he had some old photos of her in an old photo album that belonged to his parents.
I asked Clive to send in the photos, which we get to share today. The photos are dated 1931/2 and show Aloha both at Kawau Island and Great Barrier Island.
In the Gt Barrier photos things must have been cosy aboard, with a mixed crew of 10. Anyone able to ID any of the crew?
At Kawau we see Aloha at anchor with SS Duchess, in Mansion House Bay. From these photos it was obvious the Clive’s Aloha is the launch that Charles Robinson built in St Marys Bay, Auckland in 1926, Lots to read and view at the link below https://waitematawoodys.com/2015/02/24/aloha/
The launch Ngarunui was designed by Jim Young c.1955/7, I’m unsure of the builder, was it also Jim Young – can anyone advise? Built from kauri planks, carvel on ribs, she measures 48’ in length, with a beam of 12’ and draws 4’8”. Power is via a 200hp Doosan L136T engine that gives her a comfortable cruising speed of 8.5 > 10 knots, at idle she will do 5 knots, so only slips fuel. A bonus is a 20hp Yanmar auxiliary with its own prop, not seen often these days but a nice comfort factor. The Yanmar also drives the freezer compressor. As seen in the photos she really fits into the motor sailer category and comes with good set of sails – note the wooden mast shown in the photos above has been replaced with a new alloy one, but the wooden ones are available (needs repair).
With a combined fuel tank capacity of 1200L and 800L water Ngarunui is well set up for extended cruising. And of course a 12’ beam makes for a comfortable life aboard. Very well priced for 48’ launch presented in her condition.
The launch Meteor / Comet II was built by Collings and Bell and is reputed to by at the time the fastest commerical launch in New Zealand, with a top speed of 36 knots, carrying 12 passengers. She plied her trade as a tourism launch on Lake Wakatipu, Oueenston, but also has been based out of the Bay of Islands, Rotorua, Picton and the Marlborough Sounds.
Just popped up on tme as a work-in-progress and sadly a long way off her original configuration.
33’ in length, these days she is powered by a Ford 180hp diesel engine – would be interested to hear what powered her in the zoom zoom days.
Classic Launch Kokoru Damaged In Pine Harbour Marina fire yesterday – refer the NZ Herald for details, its still a little to raw to go into details – more later. But I’m sure you’ll all be thinking of the owners.
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