CRAFTSMANSHIP
additional strength new frames were fitted at about three feet
spacings. The interior joinery was mostly renewed and a new Yanmar
54HP engine was installed.
Alongside Eileen Patricia was Wainamu, a new boat that has
already had something of a chequered history. She is an L Francis
Herreshoff-designed 26ft canoe stern yawl which started life as a kit
boat supplied by Maine boatbuilders Hylan and Brown. The kit was
initially assembled by another New Zealand boatbuilder but when the
owner realised that things were not as they should be, he brought the
boat to MCN. Marco soon found a number of fundamental problems,
not least that the Oregon pine stem, keel and horn timber were
“glued in three different directions with the rabbet lines on one side
completely different to the other” and that the oak frames had been
assembled “with the bevel the wrong way”. He had no choice but to
remove the kauri planking so that he could “fair the hell out of it”.
Left: The 26ft motor boat Eileen
Patricia was designed and built
by Kiwi Arnold Couldrey in 1933.
Right: L Francis Herreshoff-
designed 26ft canoe stern yawlTop: Jiro Tabaru originally from Japan (left) and Marco
Scuderi, born in Sicily Above: The 38ft Logan
brothers designed Victory built 1906Barbarella a 1969 Riva SuperaquaramaAlthough he was unable to reuse much of the planking, he managed
to find some more kauri, recycled from a fishing vessel that was never
completed.
In a lean-to alongside his shed was the 38ft Victory, which was yet
to be started. She was built in triple skin kauri by the famous Logan
brothers – as a fishing boat – in 1906 but she was later converted to a
yacht with the addition of a cabin. Lord Jellicoe, the Governor
General of New Zealand in the 1920s, frequently raced on her and in
1928 she became the first yacht to sail to Norfolk Island - 1,200 miles
from New Zealand – and back again. For some time, Marco has been
making a point of buying up any kauri as soon as he hears it is
available in readiness for this project which, he thinks, will be “a huge
restoration”. At some point in her life Victory has acquired a
Bermudan rig but when she is eventually relaunched, she will have a
gaff cutter rig very similar to the original.