Tag Archives: Classic Woodys

LABOUR WEEKEND CLASSIC WOODY BOATING AT KAWAU ISLAND

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LABOUR WEEKEND CLASSIC WOODY BOATING AT KAWAU ISLAND

In recent years the Kawau Boating Club have probably been the must progressive boating club in town with their upgrades to facilities – clubhouse, jetty, fuel dock etc and securing the longtime tenure on the clubs assets.

In addition to all this the club, spearheaded by Mike Mahoney, have been planning to create an icon event for the club – well sometimes looking backwards is a smart thing – for decades the KBC hosted every Labour Weekend an OPENING WEEKEND REGATTA, but for all the wrong reasons the event had slipped off the calendar. Fast forward to 2024 and opening weekend at Kawau is back – bigger and better than ever. 

KBC will be holding hands with the Ponsonby Cruising Club to offer up an action packed long weekend of boating activity – afloat and ashore. See below for details.

While most of the on-the-water activity is sailing focussed, WW have been working with KBC and PCC to encourage classic woody launches and classic cruising yachts to attend. 

The plan is to hold a classic woody event on the Sunday where woodys will participate in a parade around the bays / baches in Bon Accord Harbour – along the lines of the Mahurangi Weekend launch parade. Meeting time will be 11am off KBC wharf.

We will spice it up with prizes for things like – Best Dressed Craft / Longest Traveled / Oldest Boat / Lucky Draw etc – + all woodys in the parade will also go in the draw for a haul-out at the Slipway Milford yard. On the Saturday there will be a waitematawoodys gathering ashore to catch up and enjoy each others company. There will be lots of opportunities over the weekend to enjoy the recently refurbished clubhouse – so make plans to be there.

So for now

1. Circle Oct 25 > 28 in the diary

  1. 2. View / download the file below to read all about the weekend.

3. If you own a yacht or crew on one – down load the entry form at the link below

LABOUR WEEKEND SPRING SPLASH (12)Download

And there is always a woody boat story – check out the photo below ex Ken Ricketts of two woodys in Whakatakataka Bay (Orakei, Auckland), can we put a name to the boat in the foreground. Excuse the image quality – pulled off TV screen.

INPUT ex NATHAN HERBERT – It’s Natasha which kept sinking and then was hauled at Okahu and presumably left by road or bin. The other is a Kempthorne / Salthouse KB760 type, presumable fibreglass. https://waitematawoodys.com/2017/06/07/natasha/

CLASSIC WOODY CRUISE TO RIVERHEAD TAVERN 

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CLASSIC WOODY CRUISE TO RIVERHEAD TAVERN 

Saturdays cruise up the upper reaches of the Waitemata Harbour to the historic Riverhead Tavern was a day of two halves  – the journey there and back was a tad annoying with strong SW’s coming across from the western suburbs (check out below the video below that Ant Smit sent me from aboard – Waikaro) but once into the creek it was a very enjoyable day. Lots of new faces and lots of support for WW, with the number WW shirts and burgess on display.

A couple of serious efforts by woodys to make the trip – John Lord (MV Tangaroa) came up from Wellington and was my quest on Raindance and Peter Jones and Diana (MV Kaikoura) who cruised down from Whangarei. And also a great turnout from the boat less that came by road.

Special thanks to the ferry skippers for being very accomodating re wharf berthing.

The thinking caps have been put on re another gathering before winter sets in – initial thoughts are a Clevedon River Cruise and / or a Gulf Island Raid that finishes with a beach bbq – back soon.

I finished the weekend with a WW coffee from the Devonport Deli, thank you Sunil (barista) 🙂

2024 MAHURANGI REGATTA – CLASSIC WOODY LAUNCH PARADE 130+ PHOTOS 

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My GIRL
MEOLA
Launch Parade

2024 MAHURANGI REGATTA – CLASSIC WOODY LAUNCH PARADE 130+ PHOTOS 

As regular readers of the waitematawoodys site know the last weekend of January is always a biggie on the wooden boating calendar. The Mahurangi Cruising Club year-on-year pull off the biggest wooden boating event in New Zealand – {the} Mahurangi Regatta. If you type that into the WW search box your day will be ruined – hundreds of classic wooden boating photos.

I’ll apologise upfront for the lack of sailing photos – these days there are a lot of other happy-snappers recording the racing – when and if I get photos or links, I’ll add them to the story. 

It was a sub 24hr up and back trip to Mahurangi – I had an important family event that I have been dodging for years, and this year the message was – “be here” 🙂

I came away from Mahurangi feeling very upbeat for the health of the classic wooden motor boat movement – there was in excess of 50 classic woodys in the Mahurangi Harbour and from that fleet 32 skippers participated in the classic woody launch parade. A record turnout, so I say thank you those that took part and specially those that dressed their craft.

I was particularly heartened to see the return of several craft that had drifted away from the scene due to relocations, long tern refits and frustration with the community. Of note was Florance Dawn, Kumi and Raiona.

People linked to the supposedly organisation of the the parade (I’m not talking about the MCC) need to wake up to the contribution that the classic launches make to the event – 50+ craft is a mighty powerful visual vista. So fingers crossed the housekeeping improves to ensure the loyalist keep turning up.

After the speed bumps at the start, the parade got underway and a good time was had by the skippers, crews and spectators afloat and ashore at Sullivans Bay.

Enjoy the gallery of photos – some (most) boats appear twice, some I’m sure missed the camera, can’t be everywhere:-) Thanks to Steve Horsley for the photo of Raindance and Murray Deeble for the race start photo.

As always click on photos to enlarge 😉

A reward – first woody to tell me which boat in the above photos has the largest WW flag – wins a normal size WW burgee – enter at waitematawoodys@gmail.com