A Kauri Classic Comes Home

For a classic boat devotee, few moments are more heartbreaking than an encounter with a famous and once-beautiful old racing yacht found abandoned to the elements and in the terminal stages of her long and illustrious life. I shudder at the specter: gray skeletal timbers, rubbish-strewn bilges, and the hideous accretions that mock those once-lovely lines. With eyes averted, I invariably pass by with a profound sense of sadness. This does not happen in New Zealand. There, blessed with a sunny optimism coupled with a tenacious can-do spirit, the Kiwis have developed the happy knack of seeing not ghastly liabilities in decrepit old boats but invaluable maritime heritage assets, well worth the time, money, and effort to restore. The passion for saving New Zealand’s unique yachts built of kauri wood, especially the multi-skinned monocoque vessels of the 19th and 20th centuries, has resulted in heroic rescue missions and the restoration of many of the country’s most important historic boats.

On the North Island in 2002, a small group of wooden-boat aficionados came together to create the nonprofit Classic Yacht Charitable Trust (CYCT), a public interest and educational body focusing on the restoration and repair of New Zealand’s once-famous but long-neglected racing yachts. They found them literally wasting away in bays, mangrove swamps, and locked sheds around the coast. Backed by enthusiastic community and corporate support, the trust has gone from strength to strength and now, after almost two decades of impressive results, finds itself the custodian of five gaff-topsail cutters and has been involved in restoring five other yachts (and even recovering an 1865 schooner from Muriwai Beach). The yachts make a splendid sight racing on Auckland’s windy Waitemata Harbour, at wooden boat festivals, and under sail each year in the much-anticipated, 160-year-old Mahurangi Regatta (see accompanying article, page 44).