THE LEGEND OF DAVEY JONES OF WAKATAHURI 

Todays woody story is a cracker read and comes to us from Matthew Underwood. Matthew and group of 7 ventured out to Wakatahuri in Pelorus Sound, Marlborough to catch up with the legendary mariner Davey Jones. To those unfamiliar with Davey, he has been lapping NZ in his classic wooden 100 year old vessel – KELVIN for more years than I can remember. When not afloat Davey lives in Wakatahuri, located in Marlborough at the top of the South Island.

Read and view more on the vessel KELVIN here https://waitematawoodys.com/2013/03/20/kelvin/

The #1 motivation for the trip was to obtain an autographed copy of Davey’s book titled – DAVEY JONES OF WAKATAHURI. Anyway thats enough from me, I hand over to Matthew to tell the tale.

“The other weekend I joined some great adventurers for a marvellous trip down to get a book about Davy Jones and Wakatahuri. You can pick up a copy of this fascinating book by simple e-mail – but we made it into a bit of an adventure for the weekend.

We are a Wellington crew and our destination was the outer reaches of the Pelorus Sound at the top of the South Island. We all made our way to Picton, a number of them cycled to Havelock, and a couple of us drove the car.

From Havelock Adrian from KenePeru Water Taxis took us out to Beverly Bay. On the other side of the 100m high hill was Wakatahuri. It was a pretty challenging climb especially as my first big climb with a couple of new hips.  We got a marvellous look down from the top of the hill. Natalie came and looked for us because we were slower than expected. She had tales of people coming to grief from that climb down into Wakatahuri. It was pretty amazing to walk out the last 100 metres on a track and see the wharf,  the wrecks, the still functional boats, and the various sheds that fill up the Bay. 

Once there we met Gavin and Davey and got a brief outline of the place. Most of us started with a cup of tea in Daveys house. We then picked through a bunch of interesting combinations of machinery and applications. There is a working slipway there with a Lister engine. It is turned over by a truck starter motor and driven off a battery. The starter wheel runs around the flywheel, and once it’s up to speed it chugs into life. 

Down the other end of the property is the workshop. There was another Lister engine there that powers through a series of belts a thick-nesser and other machinery.  Penguin seemed to live underneath that shed, and the possums had been in the night before as well. 

There’s an old boat slung up in the rafters that belonged to one of the dads. Gavin is lovingly restoring a wooden marvel. It’s a very fast boat on not very much horse power. Something to do with being very thin and light displacement. He did admit it was supposed to be ready when his son turned 15. His current target is to have the boat ready before his new grandson turns 15. 

We had a great chat to Davy Jones in his kitchen / lounge. There are just so many interesting photos, and so many interesting books. Over a cup of tea we went around the room and discussed all the photos that we were looking at. We all bought a copy of Davey’s book and it was pretty nice to have it autographed at Wakatahuri itself. One of our group, Ross Giblin, took the cover photo of the book. Davey remembered clearly the year in the 1980’s that the photo had been taken.

As we went to leave a group of kayakers turned up to spend the night. They had had a pretty full day paddling and were keen to set up tent and relax. 

You had to be impressed with how quickly Davey disappeared into the engine room of the 100 year old Kelvin and soon had her all fired up ready to take us home. We had a lovely put-put  back to North West Bay. After opening up the house we had a meal and a couple of beers with Davey before he trampled off back home. 

It was fascinating to see 100 year old boat, with the Lister engine in it, but also a modern race car seat for the skipper, lots of charts in the roof lining of the wheelhouse, but also a radar, a couple of VHF radios, and a chart plotter and auto steering. The switchboard seemed to reflect most of the 100 years the boat had been around. 

Since we’ve got home I’ve started reading through the book, and I’m fascinated by the history of it all, and all the boats that are described in the book.

You can get a copy of the book for $60 posted to you by emailing Lynette on 

Daveyjonesofwakatahuri@gmail.com

Another treat in North West Bay was to see one of the little boats that were part of the Wahine rescue fleet. Pugwash is sitting in a garage there still resplendent in what I understand to be Giant Paints special mix of “AA yellow”. Tony Coard,  our host in Northwest Bay, had been skippering his Dad’s boat Pugwash as part of the rescue on the day.

What a great weekend that was. A big thanks to Davey for hosting us and to Tony Coard for setting the weekend up.”

Loving the photos of Davey Jones sporting a WW cap, donated by Matthew 🙂

THE BOOK