Boating NZ September 2016

By the time you read this the Rio Olympics will have been done and dusted and, because the magazine had to be at the printers before any of the medal races in the sailing events had taken place, we haven’t been able to carry any results. I’m not superstitious by nature, but – without wanting to tempt Fate, I hope our sailors have returned with a few pieces of shiny metal clinking on their chests. Please do the decent thing, Mrs Fate, and let our Kiwis fly. Back in New Zealand, things are moving into top gear with preparations for Auckland’s On the Water Boat Show at the end of the month. Again, without wishing to tempt Fate, we have hopefully suffered the last of a miserably wet winter. The…

After the bomb FILM FOOTAGE RECENTLY declassified by the US National Security Archives provides an inkling of the damage suffered by sacrificial ships after the 1946 Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests – code-named Operation Crossroads. The footage was captured from surveillance aircraft that over flew the bomb site and shows devastated warships – many of them Japanese vessels captured at the end of WWII. Many of the ships sank. Keen to establish exactly what kind of damage an atomic bomb could do to a heavily protected warship, the US Navy positioned 95 ships around the lagoon. It anticipated a few dents in the hulls, and expected to wash the ships afterwards and tow them away for further experimentation. Instead, it witnessed the horrific power of the bomb, and began to…

“...her overwhelming appeal is the way her design lends itself to stylish entertaining.” There are many attractive, interesting and innovative features on the Aquila 44 – and while they all add up to an impressive vessel, for me her overwhelming appeal is the way her clever design lends itself to stylish entertaining. She will accommodate a sizeable crowd across her spacious foredeck, large cockpit and saloon – and an expansive flybridge. And there’s an excellent “flow” between all these areas. I caught up with the cat at the recent Sydney International Boat Show, where she drew plenty of admiring visitors. A sister ship is headed to our Auckland show later this monh. Be sure to visit both the Show and the Aquila. First, some background. Aquila cats are built in…

Diesel-electric hybrid vessels have been around for over a decade – Greenline launches and sailing cat manufacturer Lagoon are among its early adopters. In both cases the electric propulsion is auxiliary to the main (diesel) engines. Configurations vary – from diesel gensets powering electric motors directly, to a battery bank charged from the main engines or gensets. To my mind these offer the worst of both worlds. You have the significant added weight and cost of an entirely separate electric propulsion system sitting alongside a perfectly serviceable diesel set up, sharing the shafts and props. The sales pitch would have you believe that, at manoeuvring speeds, the joy of gliding through the marina silently, emitting no exhaust and virtually no vibration is worth the extra dollars and weight. There’s the…

New Zealanders tend to live in denial about living in a cold country. We build houses like tents and sleep with the windows open all winter. We like fresh air and will endure any amount of cold that comes with it. The rest of the world looks at us with horror from the closed window comfort of central heating or the humid insulation of tropical climates. Our boats are no different. We keep the hatch open; we have no insulation and no heating. We are perpetually on a summer cruise, with rum sundowners and flow-through transoms and seem not to take note of the three other seasons. I spent my youth surfing all winter and sailing in shorts. It was fun – and miserable cold was considered something that built…

The Antipodes Islands rear from the Southern Ocean like steep rock punctuation marks from a rumpled sheet of grey water. Altogether they form a rugged, cliff-bound landmass of about 20km2 – roughly the size of Rangitoto Island in the Hauraki Gulf. Located some 820km south of Timaru, the tussock-capped tops of the islands host thousands of Antipodean wandering albatross which go there to breed, other albatross species, endemic snipe, pipit, penguins and two parakeet species (Antipodean and Reischek’s). A total of 150 insects from 12 orders and 20 arachnids have been recorded from the Antipodes Islands. Nine species were new to science. Of the insect species 17 percent are thought to be endemic. But the bane of this pristine ecology is mice, the only alien mammal – about 200,000 of…