124 Boating New Zealand
motor-driven craft, just as the motor-car had replaced the horse.
Secondly, the Australian market for top-end keel yachts
had dried up with the Federation imposing punitive tarifs
on new builds. hirdly, the keel yacht-building boom of the
1890s and early 1900s had produced a large stock of excellent
racing and cruising craft that were superbly designed and built
and almost indestructible with their diagonal monocoque
construction in heart kauri.
In 1922, the loss of Onelua to the Waitemata to provide a
story-book Bailey challenger for the Logan Ariki still smarted with
Auckland yachtsmen. An avid student of overseas yacht design,
Bill Endean turned back to Charles Bailey to design and build a
new big keel yacht. hey probably started the conversations in the
Private Bar at the Waverley Hotel on the corner of Queen Street
and Customs Street East, where much waterfront business was
transacted and where Bailey was a ixture.
Charles Bailey was just 57, at the height of his powers as
a designer and constructor. He too had stayed in touch with
overseas design parameters and rating rules for keel yachts but his
business was now irmly centred on building commercial vessels,
Island schooners, coasters and ferries while his younger brother
Walter, at Bailey & Lowe, dominated the launch-building trade.
he international rating rules had been stable for some time.
he Metre Rule of 1907 seemed to be the last straw for New
Zealand constructors and yachtsmen who had built to at least
four diferent rules since the 1880s. None of these had produced
the all-rounder – a wholesome, seaworthy yacht that suited local
usage, a mixture of summer cruising in relatively open waters
with long passages on the one hand, and round-the-buoys racing
in harbours and short passage races on the other.
here was no longer any pressing need to comply withThere was no
longer any pressing
need to comply
with International
rating rules.ABOVE Bill Endean.
ABOVE Prize to windward of
her great rival, Rawene.International rating rules. Since the Australian Federal
Government put up tarifs on imported yachts and killed the
lourishing export trade which saw Logan and Bailey yachts
dominating Australian racing, Kiwi-built yachts no longer had
the opportunity to race against overseas yachts built to the latest
rating rule, and it was many years before that was to come about.
And really, nobody was very upset about that, except a handful
who kept up to date with the latest overseas yachting magazines.
Among that handful was the energetic editor of the weekly
New Zealand Yachtsman magazine, W.A. “Wilkie” Wilkinson,a short man with a loud voice in print and a louder voice in
person. After his magazine expired in 1918, he became the
yachting writer for the Auckland Star daily newspaper under the
“Speedwell” by-line, giving him an even bigger audience.
hese activists were keen to bring New Zealand back into
the international mainstream and embrace the Metre Rule.
In October 1908, as Rawene was being prepared for the water,
there was a passing reference that she was an 8-metre, but little
signiicance was attached to it.
However, at the same time, the Squadron issued a vague
statement that it adopted the Metre Rule and would soon put on