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K
en Sharp, or Sharpie as he’s generally known, has
been operating the Floating Dock in Westhaven
Marina for 40 years and over that time has built up
a passionate client base.
Sharpie’s been around boats all his life and it all
began with his father Allen, who owned a little cruising keeler,
and his mother Tess, who was a very good rower. In the early
1950s Sharpie raced Zeddies and Idle Alongs at the Hobsonville
Yacht Club.
Sharpie’s always earned his own money; as a teenager he ran
two paper runs – the Herald in the morning and Auckland Star at
night – while working weekends and holidays with Northshore
Concrete Products making concrete blocks.
By age 16 he’d saved up enough to buy the International 14,
Neptune, which he raced with two others. The International 14
is a two-person boat, but as Sharpie and his crew were so light it
wasn’t a major disadvantage.
Around 1968 he got into mullet boats and bought N12
Wairere, one of the 20’ N Class. After five years of racing her
with the Ponsonby Cruising Club, he bought the Collings &
Bell-designed L Class Mullet Tamariki, which had won the 1968
Lipton Cup with Sharpie crewing.He skippered Tamariki for three seasons before selling her and
opting to crew for Don and Jim Lidgard in their Mullet boats. The
Lidgards won the Lipton Cup twice with Sharpie crewing.
Then for his big OE, he accepted a crew position on the 11m
keeler Witchcraft, a lightish USA One-Ton yacht returning home.
While the voyage began promisingly, it began unravelling when
they were hit by the tail end of hurricane south of Rarotonga.
Witchcraft’s skipper tried towing a car tyre but the rope
chafed through, so he deployed the anchor off the stern. This
didn’t provide enough drag and Witchcraft took off down the
face of a wave, slammed into the trough and pitchpoled. Along
with the rest of the crew, Sharpie was downstairs at the time.
“There was a crash, it went all dark and suddenly there was
heaps of water inside,” he recalls.
No one was hurt, but Witchcraft suffered damage to her
windows, stanchions, handrails and lost the dinghy. After the
hurricane abated, Witchcraft limped into Rarotonga, where they
spent six weeks repairing the damage.
Sharpie stayed with Witchcraft until she reached Hawaii,
where he joined another yacht heading for Vancouver. It was
there that he saw a rudimentary floating dock, which sat on
four fixed poles, with the platform raised and lowered with an
electric worm drive on each pole.
At the time he thought, “That’s a smart idea,” and stored it
away for future use. After three months in Vancouver crewing
on race yachts, he moved to Long Beach, California, where he
worked as a race crew.Sharpie’s been
around boats all his
life and it all began
with his father
Allen, who owned
a little cruising
keeler...Another mullet
boat once owned
by Ken Sharp – the
Wairere at anchor
in the 1980s.