Wednesday 3 February 2016

Mahurangi River

I'd never heard of the Mahurangi River until the other day and suddenly it is where the action is. The Mahurangi Regatta was last weekend and a fleet of Kiwi St Ayles Skiffs made an appearance as part of their raid to North Island.
New Zealand Coastal Rowing got a fleet together for a two-week tour, centred on the country's premier event for classic wooden yachts and power boats. Boat designer supreme John Welsford accompanied the raid in his liveaboard cabin cruiser, acting as 'baggage barge' as he put it.
More pictures Alan Houghton's excellent Waitematawoodys site and and Mahurangi Magazine.
From the perspective of a dismal windy, wet and dark northern winter, it looks brilliant.
One skiff was even sailed...

3 comments:

Alden Smith said...

The Mahurangi area (not far from where I live) also hosts a Classic wooden yacht weekend where large numbers of old and not so old wooden yachts strut their stuff.

The last time I was there the Matakoe Museum (Not that far north of Mahurangi) had on display a very nice copy of a traditional flat bottomed skiff used in the tidal harbours on New Zealands west coast in the 19th century. It would be interesting to trace the lineage of this boat (NZ being a former British Colony) back to its roots.

Unknown said...

Would be nice if when you linked (un-asked) to someones website eg waitematawoodys.com that you made reference to its name & just didn't call it 'here' :-(
Alan H waitematawoodys

Chris Partridge said...

Sorry about that, Alan. It's difficult to know the protocol sometimes. I have updated the post.