Tag Archives: Wakatere

Wakatere

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WAKATERE

photos & details ex Ken Ricketts 

Built in 1939 by Roy Lidgard  & was based at Mercury Island as the Island managers boat, for a period in the later 1950’s – early 60’s.

The shed photos of Wakatere were taken by Ken when he recently inspected her on the owners property in Te Atatu. She is currently undergoing a protracted major refit, which started in the early 1990’s & it appears work has stalled on her.

She still has her 60hp 4 cyl Ford still in place, having been refitted after an overhaul, as part of her present restoration.

The hull has had a major work over, having been splined & sheathed in fibreglass 😦 . In addition a little rot around the deck lines has been removed & some fairly major refastening work, in respect of the ribs.

She was lengthened to 40 feet a good number of years ago, so she in fact now looks a little different to her sister ship Isa Lei (Taipari), search Isa Lei to view. She still has her special tuck lines.

Harold Kidd Update

WAKATERE was built by Lidgards for Ray Vincent, the well-known truck wrecker and repairer. She was in NAPS as Z27 between 1942 and 1943 with Ray as skipper. P.D. Simmonds of Tauranga owned her in the early 1960s when she had a 90hp Graymarine.

Isa Lei (original name was Taiparu)

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ISA LEI (original name was Taiparu)

Details & photos from Ann Hood (owner of Avanti) & Ken Rickitts
Isa Lei was Ann’s parents boat & she was built in 1946/47 by Lidgards & was one of 2 identical boats — the other is ‘Wakatere’. The only visible difference is, that the Wakatere  had a dodger from new &  Isa Lei didn’t . They both had that unique shaped tuck, the streamlined bow porthole frames.
When she was built, she had the name on gold leaf in script, slanting up at an angle on the combings — (from the side deck line towards the cabin top if you like),  after of the last window between the window & where the combings curved down to the cockpit.
Isa Lei was owned for a period in the 80s  by a couple who lived in Wheturangi Rd Green Lane, called Jack & Isobel Lucas (the battery people, lived in Panmure) & Ken Rickitts first meet Jack in the early 1980’s, when he pulled in to Mansion House Bay, one day on his way to Auckland with the boat from Whangarei, where he has just bought & taken delivery of her, from the previous owners, Helen & Jim Somner, who had had her for a number of years.
Ann says the small photo has a date on the back of 09.01.64 and believes this is when the Somner family owned her.  The photos of her in blue were as her parents found her in Bowentown.  She was hauled out quickly at Opua on arrival and then at the BOI Yacht Club for the work. The man doing the recaulking is Keith Edwards

Ann thinks that her Mum and Dad “filled in” the flying bridge and remembers spending hours stripping and sanding the pilot light mast and vhf mast and also sanding the Kauri for her nameplate.

Photos are a montage over the last 70 years. Some pretty, some not…. 🙂

Harold Kidd Update

ISA LEI was built as TAIPARU (not TAUPARU) by Lidgard Bros at the Western Reclamation, Auckland for J. Carlton of Sunny Bay, Kawau and launched on 7th December 1939 with a 6 cylinder 90hp Graymarine petrol engine. In 1946 she was owned by C. Pryce Jones. I H McRae owned her in 1953 and it was he who changed her name to ISA LEI. Roughly 1954 to 1975 she was owned by Lloyd and Jim Somner etc etc.

I think her sistership was WAKATERE which spent a lot of her life in Tauranga.