Queenstown Charter Launches
The photos above come to us via Brett Tomkies fb and show Brett’s great granddad and grandads Queenstown based charter launches – Kelvin and Muratal II.
Do we know what became of the boats?
Amazing Restoration of 1912 Classic Lake Boat – Lion
How did I miss this story on fb from a year ago – back in August 2020 on WW we covered the amazing restoration of the 38’ launch built in 1912 by James McPherson in Dunedin for Hugh McKenzie of Lake Wakatipu (thank you HDK for the intel)
How today thanks to a fb post by the company that restored her – the Repair My Boat Yard (formerly Southern Classic Boats) in Invercargill, South Island, we get to see Lion, back on Lake Wakatipu, Queenstown.
Hats off to everyone that was involved in the project – she is up there with Rawhiti in terms of attention to detail and workmanship.
View the restoration story here https://waitematawoodys.com/2020/08/03/restoration-of-mv-lion/
And a peek back at per restoration here https://waitematawoodys.com/2016/03/15/lion/
METEOR III
Last week we ran a story on the very fast Meteor II, the 33’ Collings & Bell built ex Lake Wakatipu, Queenstown, tourism launch. Link below https://waitematawoodys.com/2022/03/15/meteor-ii-comet-ii/
I was subsequently contacted by John Bullivant who supplied the above photos of Meteor III. John advised that his research uncovered that all of the Metero’s (1 / II / III) were owned by Frank Haworth, who ran a very successful tourism business in Queenstown in the 1950’s>1960’s.
It is believed that Meteor III was NZ’s first hydrofoil , but built in the UK. Meteor III cruised at 55 kph and topped out at over 70kph.
I understand that she operated on the lake until the mid 1990’s, but these days is run by a charitable trust and occasionally comes out of retirement.
When she first hit the lake in the 1950’s, based on the photos it must have been an impressive sight.
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