ON A MOORING AT KAWAU ISLAND
A wee bit of a lame story today – a looooong weekend at Kawau Island. I’m waking up to this view Lidgard House. Erasing the trip up on Friday afternoon , it’s been a cracker weekend. Lots of photos tomorrow from the Kawau Boating Club Spring Splash Regatta
And as there always has to be a classic boating photo – the top photo is such a flash back to wooden boating in the gulf last century.
I wonder if that dinghy survived 🙂
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
3. If you own a yacht or crew on one – down load the entry form at the link below
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 LAUNCH WANDABYNE – 1929 KAWAU CRUISE
Todays photos come to us from Max Arthur and date back almost 100 years. Max came across the WW site while research his father – E.W. Arthur and grandfather – H.R. Arthur.
The photos record a cruise to Kawau Island inc.1929.
In the 1st photo (and other) Max believes the flush deck launch is – WANDABYNE. Which is a newbie to me , but in a previous WW story we identified a launch named WONDABYNE (LOLITA) , link below. At first I thought typo but in my eyes not the say boat. https://waitematawoodys.com/2015/06/24/wondabyme/
Can we learn more about WANDABYNE and keen to ID the other launch shown in a couple of the photos.
MYSTERY CLASSIC WOODEN LAUNCH QUIZ + Win A WW Burgee
Todays photo is very cool, cool enough to be my screen saver on the laptop.
I know the boats name and the location is probably Kawau Island. The photo is a bit of a tease to Mondays story that will be a photo bomb of images of the launch. She would have to be a contender to knock MY GIRL of its perch as the most photographed classic launch on WW 🙂 All disclose the source of the photo etc in Mondays story.
All correct entries go into the draw – cut off is 6pm Sunday 7th July.
ENTRY VIA EMAIL ONLY to waitematawoodys@gmail.com
CIRCLE THE CALENDAR – UPCOMING CLASSIC BOATING EVENTS
MANSION HOUSE KAWAU ISLAND 1971
Todays photo comes to use from ‘Timespanner’ (Auckland Library Heritage collection via Maurice Sharp fb.
The caption reads ‘Muriel Clark on the balcony at Mansion House, KAWAU ISLAND. 1971, Ron Clark (the photographer I assume).
An unusual light number of boats in the bay, and mostly launches. Maybe the yachts were out racing.
Can we put names to the 4 classics in the bay – refer below enlarged image. And for a change rather than WW merch, I’ll gift a bottle of my ‘ world famous in Devonport’ homemade tomato sauce to the first woody that supplies the correct answers. I’ll rely on Nathan Herbert to be the oracle on ID’ing the boats – Entry via email only to waitematawoodys@gmail.com – closes 7pm 23/04/24 Conditions: Winner must be Auckland based, NZ Post doesn’t like glass bottles 😉
NOTE: as pointed out by K Ricketts todays photo has been developed incorrectly – I have flipped the image toshown the correct orientation – refer below
KAWAU ISLAND – The Hauraki Gulf Woody Mecca
Recently I was sent the above photos the trial goes like this – sent in by Ken Fyfe via Ruth Thomson from Jim Tatterfield.
The top one is tagged Squadron Weekend and the 2nd one Lady Gay, but I can not spot LG in the photo – both photos are ‘located’ at Mansion House Bay, Kawau Island.
Rather a lot of familiar woodys gathered in those photos.
Below the top photo is another from Jim Tatterfield of Little Jim (A16) in full flight. A looker when launched and still is today. The bottom photo of LJ is ex Mahurangi Regatta a couple of years ago.
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.
AS ALWAYS CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE
If you have any good photos, send them in to waitematawoodys@gmail.com
RAKINO ISLAND
KAWAU ISLAND
WAIHEKE ISLAND
OUT & ABOUT – on route
CLASSIC WOODEN MOTORBOAT RAINDANCE – SUMMER 2023/24 – TRIP REPORT
With 2023 being the worst boating year that I can recall, whilst I held high hopes I also was semi expecting another fizzer – well as most of you will know the Christmas – NY period turned out to be a winner for those that slipped the lines and headed away. Other than New Years eve being very wet (but warm) we enjoyed great launch cruising conditions. Not always perfect but if you picked a spot that suited the wind and travelled at times when conditions were settled it was never unpleasant. I put my faith in PredictWind and they delivered.
We left the marina on the 27th Dec. and chose Woody Bay, RAKINO ISLAND for Night One. Sundown drinks aboard Jenny and Angus Rogers stunning classic launch – Centaurus. Stunning sunset (as above)
Day Two was also spent in Woody Day as the wind had picked up, but very sheltered in the bay + the call had gone out for pizza from the islands Woody Bay Pizzeria, truely the best pizza’s I have eaten.
Day Three we moved around the corner to West Bay as the forecast had a W in it which isn’t normally a good thing at Rakino – very quiet in the bay so again secured a good spot and sent Day Three and Four there.
Morning of the 30th, Day Four was decision time – head north to KAWAU ISLAND or south to WAIHEKE ISLAND – forecast was turning south so WAIHEKE was probably the better call but me stuck with the original plan and head to KAWAU, Raindance is at her best when everything on the nose so it was an ok passage. We choose to anchor for the day / night in Bostaquet Bay , a first for me, and can report a very nice anchorage and again very few boats.
Day Five (31st) we headed over to Bon Accord Harbour and took up residence on one of the RNZYS club moorings just off Lidgard House in Smelter House Bay. Plan was NYE at the recently refurbished and re-opened Kawau Boating Club. Slight problem, the power had been off on the island for 24+ hours so club closed 😦
As we relaxed onboard several helicopters were flying overhead with all manner of kit dangling below – ladders, tool boxes etc – Around 3pm power returned and thank god the back up generator had kept the beer frig working 🙂 . But the rain arrived and continued non-stop most of the night. KBC appeared to get well supported but people tended to come ashore for a meal and retreat to the boat.
Day Six was a lazy day mooching around the island and back to the mooring + KBC
Day Seven we head south to WAIHEKE ISLAND and spent the day in Oneroa re provisioning and hosting some friends from Devonport for drinks, then catching up with Waiheke friends ashore.
Day Eight a lazy day exploring WAIHEKE and moved to Hekerua Bay for the evening. I crossed the dark side and had drinks onboard another friends new non wood boat – putting aside the construction it was very grand (ice maker + water maker – 200L a day) our pup was very taken with the ability to do 360° laps of the boat.
The plan was to head down to the ‘bottom end’ the next day but the forecast included a H & a E so the decision was made to head home after another lazy day, on Day Nine.
The trip restored my faith in owner a boat and helped make 2023 a distant memory.
There is so many photos that I have divided the trip report into two sections, Part One = the trip and Part Two (tomorrow) = the classic boats that were out and about. Todays story is broken up by location – ENJOY
(And sorry for the lengthy, slightly over-the-top title but there are key words that do wonders for the overseas search engines)
RAKINO ISLAND 🔻
KAWAU ISLAND – Bostaquet Bay 🔻
KAWAU ISLAND – Smelter House Bay 🔻
KAWAU ISLAND – Kawau Boating Club 🔻
WAIHEKE ISLAND 🔻
WEKA – 1
Woody Murry Deeble sent in the above photo of the workboat – Weka-1, that he spotted on his xmas/ny migration north.
We have previously learnt from a Lew Redwood post that in a past life she was a cray-boat > snapper longliner working out of KAWAU ISLAND.
Previous owners have included Wilf Tech and Gordon Johnson.
Photos below ex Lew’s fb
A very smart, well proportioned workboat, you dont see many of those 🙂
CLASSIC WOODEN BOAT – KAWAU ISLAND – 1929 MOVIE
Sometimes I come across classic woody content that is just too good to not share, sometimes the format might be an old home movie footage or faded photos straight out of a shoe box – todays one such day. Mooching around the www I came across a Lew Redwood fb post that had a link to some film footage from c.1929 that is stored / saved at Nga Taonga – the NZ archive of film, television and sound.
The footage is tagged – PLEASURE ISLE, KAWAU ISLAND. Viewing it, it quickly becomes obvious that back in the day it was made to promote tourism / visitation to Kawau Island.
Mansion House Bay is wall to wall wooden launches and a few wind thiefs. Just too many to try and identify but some look familiar.
The images above are screen grabs from the movie footage. Below is the link to the movie – its great viewing – enjoy 🙂
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1952966974947278/permalink/3556773991233227/
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