ALMA G & ALMA G II

photos & detail ex Harold Kidd

Here is the first of a series of game fishing images taken by Tudor Collins at the Bay of Islands, which Harold would guess to be from the period around 1950-55 . The images were bought at a flea-market by Sharon Knight who has made them available via Harold for all of ww followers to relish.
This first one (today) shows ALMA G on the left and ALMA G II on the right.
ALMA G was built by Collings & Bell for E.C. Arlidge in 1922, the first of a series of splendid 35-36ft game-fishing launches built to Charles Collings’ renowned concave-convex planing hull design for the Bay of Islands. Her original configuration was the same as ALMA G II alongside her in this pic. ALMA G II was built as ZANE GREY for Mervyn Arlidge (for use by Zane Grey) in 1927. Other similar launches were MANAAKI and OTEHEI for F. Elliott (1927), LORNA DOONE for A. A. Holmes (1927) and AVALON for Peter Williams (1927). All were fitted with 6 cylinder Redwing 85-100hp marine engines.
Zane Grey’s visits to New Zealand with his mates caused an explosion of interest in game-fishing and added lots of US dollars to the NZ economy, culminating in the Collings & Bell’s commission from Zane Grey to build the 46 footer FRANGIPANI for fishing in Tahiti, launched in 1932.
ALMA G appears to have had a recent modernisation. Does anyone know when this done and who was the builder?

Photo below of ALMA G in her original configuration c1950, before the alterations.

Update ex Bruce Overhill
Bruce spent many hours on the refurbished Alma G in 2004 chasing Marlin. He commented that she can still catch them and was holding her own against all the big boats in the Bayleys fishing competition out of Whangaroa Harbor.

Below are a couple of photo to show the changes that she has had done.

28-04-2016 photo below of Alma G ex Hylton Edmonds via Ken Ricketts