Tag Archives: Paea

Whangarei Town Basin – Mystery Launch + Paea P3552

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Whangarei Town Basin – Mystery Launch

Keith and Heather Nicholson sent in the above photo of an old post card of the Whangarei Town Basin. The photo first appeared on a Mitchell Hutchings fb post. 

In the photo, lower right, we can see a launch hauled out – so todays question is – can we put a name to the boat?

Heather mentioned that their beloved woody – Paea (photo below) was for sale on tme. An amazing classic, the 72’, 1942 ex Harbour Defence Motor Launch (P3552) offers so many boating opportunities.

29-09-2023 UPDATE – photo below of Paea about to be relaunched after some TLC – TLC doesnt really fit a vessel the size of Paea 🙂

05-10-2023 UPDATE – Back in the water. we understand that six months ago the boat was put inside a shed and dried out, the seams were splined and the hull was fiber-glassed. The Fodens were removed and replaced with Cummins. (details & photos ex Ken West)

HDML Tarapunga Sinks

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HDML Tarapunga Sinks

details & photos ex Heather Reeve

I have some sad news in regard to a piece of NZ’s Maritime history – ‘Tarapunga’, one of the 16 Harbour Defence Motor Launch’s (HDML) that the Navy purchased in 1943 & were later used for Survey work charting the NZ coastline (painted white) & also undertook Fisheries Protection work (painted black) caught fire & sunk off Nelson early this week.

The photo of her berthed at the wharf was taken by Keith Ingram (Skipper magazine) in Picton only a few months ago.

One of Tarapunga’s sister ships ‘Paea’, owned by Keith Nicholson & Heather Reeve (photo below) is in the CYA fleet.

 

 

 

Paea

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Paea

Paea – the only Harbour Defence Motor Launch in original condition, and in good working order out of the 16 the Navy bought in 1943. Yes she is wood 🙂

Interested in reading more on all things Motor Launch, be they serving in the Navy or in civvy hands. (over 250 photo’s and 50+ stories and tech data / links to other ML pages) Check out the link below
 

http://rednaz1958.blogspot.com/2016/03/composite-list-of-hdmls-still-active.html