Boating NZ December 2016

Like people all over the world, I thought the good folk in Canterbury had shown admirable and remarkable resilience in not only surviving but overcoming the devastation from the 2011 earthquake. After all the suffering, the region was finally beginning to see the light of day – homes being rebuilt, the return of infrastructure, a stronger heartbeat in the regional economy. In fact, if you’ll forgive me for being fanciful, I imagined the story in this issue about the restoration of a famous, 150-year old Christchurch telescope encapsulated that turnaround. A telescope that so nearly became part of the detritus of history after being crushed in the 2011 earthquake – but which is now being lovingly and painstakingly restored. It will, once again, allow viewers to peer into and ponder…

Better reporting from Volvo Ocean Race THE 2017-18 VOLVO Ocean Race is reinventing its Onboard Reporter (OBR) programme to tell more of the raw story than ever before – with the race creating a squad of multimedia reporters able to work across the fleet rather than being attached to individual teams. The team of 10-12 reporters will be more fluid and flexible, potentially being able to embed within teams on a leg-by-leg basis instead of signing on with one team for the whole race as before. “This will also help with what is a difficult task – balancing integrity and acquiring sufficient trust of the sailors,” says Volvo Ocean Race CEO Mark Turner. “It’s like a war reporter jumping into the front line with the soldiers. Their job is to…

1. Who won the bronze medal in the Laser at the 2016 Rio Olympics? 2. What is the common name for this type of transmission? 3. What is “The Captain’s Daughter” another term for? 4. Two powered vessels approaching head on should? a. Both turn to port b. Both turn to starboard c. Carry on the same course d. The one leaving harbour should give way 5. Beaufort numbers 2 to 6 are classed as? a. Winds b. Breezes c. Gales d. Storms 6. In a 2015 survey, what was the estimated population of mature female Maui’s dolphins? a. 10 b. 50 c. 100 d. 150 7. True or false? On a recreational boat it doesn’t matter if you have adult or kids sized lifejackets, as long as you have…

The most recent vessel to emerge from Dickey Boats’ Napier facility is the Dickey Semifly 45, another aluminium boatbuilding triumph. In many respects an upscaled, twin-engined version of Dickey’s popular, multi-award winning Semifly 32, she’s much bigger and even more capable, but equally well-designed and built. With his tongue firmly in cheek, Jason Dickey calls the current crop of popular family-friendly motor launches “lakes and waterways” vessels: they’re just the thing for the sheltered waters of eastern USA’s Intracoastal Waterway, the Mediterranean or Australia’s Queensland. Optimised for onboard comfort and entertaining, for many boaters they epitomise the boating lifestyle, but for dedicated sport fishers such vessels have serious drawbacks. Often the only place from which to wet a line is the swim platform and that’s only when it’s calm. Boaters…

The concept of an easily built, simple and seaworthy boat had its genesis in the New Haven oyster flats in the mid-1800s. Originally designed as a load-carrying workboat, the shallow draft Sharpie quickly became popular as a cruising yacht. In the space of 50 years the concept of the Sharpie spread further and faster than any single yacht design in history. There are many superlatives when Sharpies are mentioned, but it is the “easy, cheap and fast to build” that has given the Sharpie a cult following of sailors and builders alike. Neville Watkinson had always been a fan of the Sharpie design and it was the shake up of the Canterbury earthquakes that finally pushed him into building one. As the CBD of Christchurch came down, his commercial joinery…

Our Navy came into existence officially when the ‘Royal New Zealand Navy’ designation was approved by King George VI on 1 October 1941. New Zealand sailors acquitted themselves well in WWII, and have continued to play an international role – particularly in the south-western Pacific – in the 75 years since. Highlights of the 75th anniversary celebrations included the entry of the visiting fleet into Waitemata Harbour, a 1000-strong international sailors’ street parade through Auckland’s CBD and free tours for the public through the foreign vessels. Among these were warships and sailing ships from Australia, Canada, China, Chile, Cook Islands, India, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Samoa, Tonga, and the United States of America. The event also marked an end to a more than 30-year NZ-US stalemate: one of the…