Laughing Lady

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LAUGHING LADY

A ‘new’ lady from the USA joins the NZ classic fleet. But first stop is the Whangateau Traditional Boat yard. Click any image to enlarge.

USA owner – David Gardiner
As ‘found’
Being packed up in USA
Safely in NZ
The end of the road trip North from Post Tauranga
Into the shed at Whangateau

Luders built the motorboat Laughing Lady in Connecticut in 1949 as a day fishing boat for a wealthy American socialite. A few years later she sold it to David Gardiner, who considered himself the 16th Lord of Gardiners Island. The island has an interesting history. As Americas largest private island, It had been in the family ever since his ancestor, the English settler Lion Gardiner, bought it from the Montaukett Indians in 1639 for ”one large dog, one gun, some powder and shot, some rum and several blankets”. He also obtained a charter for the island from King Charles I of England. Captain Kidd once buried treasure there, and the family withstood several attacks by pirates. Gardiner used the Laughing Lady to commute from the Island to New York where he worked as a stockbroker and also across to the up market Hamptons to ferry his guests to the Island, including Jacqui Kennedy-Onassis. Before David Gardiner passed away in 2004 the boat was sold and transported to a yard in San Diego where it underwent significant restoration of the hull before the restoration eventually stalled.

Enter Kiwis, Michael & Katy his sister-in-law who have both worked in the yachting industry and found a love for old boats working as crew on the historic 142 foot Dutch built Feadship Istros and also crewing aboard Fife yachts in various classic yacht regattas around the Mediterranean. They were looking for a small-scale project of their own and found the Laughing Lady languishing in a yacht yard in San Diego last year. They made an offer and the boat was theirs. The boat was then loaded onto a cargo ship in Los Angeles and shipped to Tauranga in March 2014, then towed on a large trailer up to Whangateau in early April (refer photos above). After being shoehorned into the main shed at Whangateau Traditional Boat yard, work will now commence returning the lady back to her former glory.

Luders stopped making boats in the 1980’s but had a fine pedigree in boat building, pioneering hot molded construction and the use of plywood during WWII.  The yard built and designed, fast commuter yachts, Navy patrol boats, tugs, launches and racing yachts including the 1962 America’s Cup winner Weatherly.

Laughing Lady is 32 foot long and was originally powered by Packard straight 8’s, nowadays is powered by twin Volvo turbo diesels.

Built of double planked cedar and mahogany with oak framing and a unique hot molded cabin trunk, she still has the basin that was used for shaving on the way to work and cast bronze fish fighting chairs. The boat will be kept as original as possible, but they will add some modern navigational equipment and something to cook on for overnight trips. Aside from that there is a lot of wiring, wood working, plumbing, paint and varnish to be done before she is completed and back on the water and turning heads as a fishing boat on her new home – the Hauraki Gulf.

Waitematawoodys will follow the work her owners will be undertaking with the assistance of Pam & George at the Whangateau Traditional Boat yard.

This might be easier to read

 

 

Lolene

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LOLENE

A classic displacement sedan launch, designed and built by Billy Rogers & launched in 1963. She was named after one of his daughters, as were a lot of Billy’s boats.

Kauri carvel construction, powered by 6 cylinder 120hp Ford diesel.

34’Length, 10’ 9” beam & 3’ 3” draft. 5’ 10” headroom, she sleeps 5 in single berths.

Currently for sale on trademe.

Harold Kidd Update

As I understand it, Billy Rogers built LOLENE for himself around 1963. Certainly she was first registered in his name with APYMBA at his then Wiilliamson Ave., Grey Lynn address. Billy had owned the 28ft keel yacht LOLOMA as a young man and was deeply fond of her. As a result some of his boats and children had the letters LO and LOMA in their names eg LADY LOMA in 1949.
Close sister ships were IOWANA (I1966) built for Dr. Kreichbaum and still in the hands of the Shorty Sefton/Pollard family and LADY FLORENCE (1966) built for Hedley Kendall. Andrew Pollard is a mine of information on these lovely sedans.
Subsequent owners of LOLENE have included K.D. Orell, Takapuna (1973), John Cossar 1989-95), Gary Hogg (1995) and Ken and Rhonda Blakie (2001).

Lady Pat

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LADY PAT

photos & details ex Craig Anderson

The owner of Lady Pat describes her as a ‘pub cruiser’ i.e. the perfect boat for navigating the upper reaches of the Waitemata Harbour & seeking refreshment at the Riverhead Hotel. I think that we will see more ‘Lady Pats’ as the popularity of the hotel grows.

Her owner is keen to find out more about her past, what he does know is an amusing read.

Lady Pat, 17′, was rescued from the side of Whangaparoa Road nearly 20 years ago by Stephen Harris (of Auckland Engineering Supplies), who paid $100.00 to the man and hauled her away. She had been stripped bare of her equipment and left sitting in the grass. Steve was told that the boat was built on Kawau Island by a retiring shipwright at the Lidgard yard. She was built of the kauri scraps left over from ship building it seems.
Steve took her home and began the restoration, with an eye toward sightseeing tours up the Puhoi river (another hotel location). While Steve was sanding off the blue paint from her transom he found ” Lady Pat” in pencil written there. After several years he found another boat and this project sat on a trailer in his shed. Two years ago he decided he would never get back to the little boat and offered it to his friend Craig Anderson, as a gift.

Craig moved Lady Pat to Wayne Olsen (Horizon Boats) for replacement of it’s cabin top and window frames along with glassing the topsides. Wayne also built a new drystack chimney for the two cylinder Ford that now powers it. I viewed her in Wayne’s shed while Waimiga was having her make-over (refer photos) & thought at the time that a vessel of this size was very lucky to be under the care of the Horizon crew.
After a lick of paint she was returned to Steves shed and waited for further repair and assembly, which was completed by Paul Middlemiss and Craig. She went back in the water at the Stillwater Boat Club in late March 2014.

08/04/2014 – Photos below ex Steve Harris & show Lady Pat as ‘found’ & at the start of the restoration process – have to say she was a very cute runabout 🙂

10/01/2015 – An update on ‘Lady Pat’
from owner Craig Anderson

“We enjoyed LP for only a short time on the water last season, caught some fish and got some hours on the little engine.
At 7kts she is a gentle performer on a smooth sea. Things get a bit wild on board when it’s rough, as she is small and buoyant.
After we pulled her out and put her on her new trailer last April, a list of jobs was developed, and one by one, done during the better days of the past winter.
We have just had the pleasure of returning to the tide and it is clear we have made improvements that will be enjoyed for years to come. Included below are two recent photos.”

New Weather Website

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New Weather Website

New (to me anyway) Weather Website

Two ww posts today 🙂

I was alerted to this weather website by CYA member Angus Rogers (MV Mahanui), it really is a cracker & amazingly it works – it predicted (correctly) a fine weekend for the CYA Waiheke Cruise while all local forecasters predicted rain. It also predicted and showed accurately the track of the cyclone that cancelled the CYA Yacht Regatta and predicted correctly the max wind speed in the Auckland area of about 30 knots.

It uses satellite imagery and ocean buoys downloaded into a massive computer program in the States to predict weather for the next week and provides animation of barometric pressure, wind speed and direction, and then if you go into the specific local zones they give even more detailed predictions as well as giving tides.

Check it out at this link http://www.marineweather.co.nz/pressure

Miss Kathleen

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Miss Kathleen

P1120645

MISS KATHLEEN

A 1902 Logan, 27’6″, kauri planked. Built by Logans for a wealthy Whangarei family. She was used as a please boat & spent most of her life in the Bay of Islands. Subsequently used for long-line fishing. She resides on Lake Rotoiti.

Powered by a 50 year old David Brown 50h.p.

Miss Kathleen was rebuilt in 1989 & purchased by her current owner, Barry Green, in 1997 from Captain Richens, an old sea captain.

Harold Kidd Update

Yet another mythological “Logan”. Looking at her hull, she’s obviously neither Logan nor 1902. A 1992 “Northern Advocate” article on her provenance talks about her 1989 rebuild by Colin Richens and infers her original build date at around 1925, which is more like it.
However, I suspect she’s a bit earlier than that and possibly one of several launches of her type built for Whangarei by David Reid of Drake Street, Auckland, around 1914-16.

ID the Boats (Matanui)

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ID the Boats

ID The Boats

image ex Bruce Yarnton

Time to lighten things up on ww.

Last night I was out & about in the Principality of Devonport & a ww follower showed me a rather fine painting of Duders Beach.
Of particular interest to me is the motor launch tied to the piles – lets see how good the train spotters are 🙂

Update from Harold Kidd (very impressive)

MATANUI was built as SAN LUIS by Ernie Lane in Picton for Martin Beck of Picton in 1923 for Cook Strait conditions. Beck sold her to Auckland owners in October 1925 and motored her up. Early Auckland owners were W.J. Bridson and J.A. Peacock but Walsh Brothers bought her in 1933 and fitted a Kelvin diesel, for which they were Auckland agents.
Between 1942 and 1945 she was used as a Naval patrol launch out of Suva (and may have had a petrol engine installed during that period (Chrysler Crown?) for rationalisation purposes. She was sold back to Leo Walsh in July 1945 but onsold to Joe Kissin (not Kissen) a well-known North Shore businessman of Lake Road, Takapuna, once again Kelvin-powered. Jack Brooke helped Joe with a redesign in 1952. She was moored off Queen’s Parade Devonport, in close company with MOANA, ARIKI, SPRAY II, MARANGI, TASMAN, JACQUELINE and the 30 sq meter TANGAIKA either side of the Iris Cable Wharf. Her call-sign was ZMQB
The Kelvin was replaced with a Fairbanks-Morse by 1954 and that by a new 6 cylinder Fordson diesel in 1960. By 1973 Joe (who was never Commodore of RNZYS) had sold her to W.K.Downey of Epsom.
He sold her to Thames and then she came back to Auckland owned by O’Meara until about 1983 etc etc.

Anyone have photos of Matanui ?

Lady Who?

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Lady Who?

Recently there has been some debate on ww & over on the CYA forum concerning the naming & numbering of vessels.

My view on the choosing of a vessels name is that anyone can name their boat what ever they like & no one has exclusivity to a name. There must be dozens of Sprays, Gypsys & Wave Dancers out there. The freedom to choose the name of your boat is one of the things that make boating so special, after all boating is one of the last almost (don’t get me started on life jackets) unregulated activities we can enjoy.

There are two ways that a vessels name can be tagged with a number:

1. The owner has had a succession of boats & chooses to name them all the same & tag that name with a numeral to identify that they now have owned three boats.

2. An owner may like a particular (& popular) name but wishes to identify their boat from others similarly named. If this is the case, they need to respect the chronological order (if known) that a particular name has been used. Common sense must come into play across vessel categories i.e. a P-Class yacht & a motor cruiser.

If records exist then the chronological order must be followed.

In the example of the many Lady Margrets – the Colin Wild built LM was the 2nd with this name, refer news clipping below. So will always be the the 2nd motorboat launched under that name – end of story. If its not I’ll edit the posts here.

Southern Seas (South Seas)

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SOUTHERN SEAS (South Seas)

photos & details ex Ken Ricketts
The present owner was told SS was a ‘Shipbuilders kit set’ (was there such a thing?) & possibly built at the Wade River c.1964. She is a 34 footer built of 3 skins of Kauri on opposite diagonals & is powered by a Lees converted 6 cyl. Ford diesel, with an underwater exhaust, & by the size of the propeller, possibly has a 1 to 1 gearbox.

When purchased 14 years ago she was called South Seas but the owner has extended the name to Southern Seas.

She is presently kept at Gulf Harbour & was previously moored at Westpark Marina.

She was out of the water for several years for a fairly extensive refit & including substantially rebuilding the cabin top, which had been in bad shape.

SS is for sale at around $85k & the owners can be contacted on 027 696 2700

A little too modern for my taste but a nice little ship that appears to be well presented.AH

 

Ineawa

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INEAWA

A Jimmy McLaren 34’4′ kauri carvel planked displacement launch built in the late 1920’s at Onehunga. Powered by a 105hp AEC diesel. Calls Tauranga home these days & currently for sale on trademe.

Anyone able to supply more info / photos?

2104 photo ex Dave Jones ex Baden Pascoe

Shenandoah

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photo ex Observer Newspaper soon after the launching
ex Stewart McFarland
Jenkins family album

Shenandoah

photos ex Monte Jones

A selection of images from the photo collection of Monte Jones, Monte like a lot of ww followers hopes that one day this magnificent vessel will be returned to a condition that more closely matches her original design, as seen in these photos.
While we all have to view photos, Monte can go one better – he has a model which was built in the 1930s by a friend of his father. The model is 55 inches long, (1/12 scale) and planked just like the real vessel. The plans for the model were specially drawn by Chas Bailey Jnr.

Enter Shenandoah in the ww search box to view more photos & details on her