Boating history
Offshore powerboating: from timber testbeds to carbon speed machines
The story of how a six-metre wooden boat called Rems sparked a marine revolution that still echoes in every offshore powerboa...
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Historic rivalry rekindled at 2025 Australian Wooden Boat Festival
But what occurred back in the 1930s? Who won the race between Ngataki and Te Rapunga?
When the inaugural trans-Tasman race c...
The End of an Era: Royal Caribbean’s Song of America Sent to the Scrapyard
A beloved icon of the cruising world, Song of America has met its final chapter. Once a jewel in Royal Caribbean’s fleet, thi...
A brief history of: Distress calls
The standard maritime distress signals we use today are universally applied and understood, but that wasn’t always the case.
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An impressive 60 years on. What does NZ Offshore Powerboating look like today?
Boating New Zealand will be following this weekend's racing offshore at Napier. Join us throughout the weekend for developing...
Holmglen: The 65th Anniversary of Its Mystery Sinking
Sixty-five years ago this month, the Holmglen, a sturdy 485-ton coastal freighter with only three years in service, met a mys...
Auckland Welcomes ARM Cuauhtémoc: The Mexican Navy’s Proud Tall Ship Visits New Zealand
The iconic ARM Cuauhtémoc sailed into Auckland’s Princes Wharf on October 28, 2024.
The Lance Fink Story: For the love of boats
Lance Fink is the founder and director of Tristram Marine. Having recently passed the batten onto his sons and semi-retired, ...
Murder most foul
Like many war vets, he never spoke about his experience at the hands of his captors – not entirely surprising given the horro...
VINTAGE VIEW – ONE MAN AND HIS BOATS; HARRY JENKINS, PART3 – Wartime Pacific cruises
Harry Jenkins could trace his ancestry through his mother’s side back to Sir Francis Drake. His new yacht, Golden Hind, the b...
ONE MAN AND HIS BOATS; HARRY JENKINS, PART 1. Strictly business
Harry Reginald Jenkins was a prominent Auckland businessman, launch owner and yachtsman for 30 years from 1916.
Harry was ...
GEORGE DIBBERN; THE 1934 TRANS-TASMAN RACE PT 111 / Te Rapunga versus Ngataki
At North Head, Te Rapunga led Ngataki by half a mile and drew steadily away in the broad lead up the coast into a rising east...
GEORGE DIBBERN; THE 1934 TRANSTASMAN RACE / Symbol of freedom
The moment they arrived in March 1934 George Dibbern and Te Rapunga were good news in Auckland. George seemed to be a new fac...
GEORGE DIBBERN AND TE RAPUNGA – PART 1 / Exotic sails
“I WILL NOT HAVE THAT MAN IN MY HOUSE”, said my mother, with quite out-of-character emphasis. She was talking about George Di...
Bean Rock 150 years
Alex and Lesley Stone delve into the history of Bean Rock lighthouse – 150 years old this year.
Fl(3) WR 8s 15m 14/11 M
Sh...
MARU AND AUCKLAND’S 24FT MULLET BOATS / Match-racing the Mulletties
John Dallimore of Whitianga has recently gifted the 24ft mullet boat Maru to Jason Prew, classicyachtsman- about-town, on the...
JACK BROOKE AND WAKAYA – The science of great design
Jack Brooke was not only a vigorous leader in New Zealand yachting and recognised from his earliest days as an amateur yacht ...
CALLIOPE SEA SCOUTS’ CENTENARY Scouting for the generations
Founded in June 1921 at HMS Philomel, the Devonport Naval Base, Calliope Sea Scouts Troop is the oldest surviving Sea Scout t...
THE SINCLAIRS OF LYTTELTON PART 3 – A fascination with lateen rigs
In February 1891 it looked as if the ‘Little Wonder Syndicate’ – which owned Mascotte – might be falling apart, or perhaps th...
THE SINCLAIRS OF LYTTELTON PART 2 – Mascotte
Jimmy Sinclair’s Mascotte was not only the Champion yacht of Lyttelton from 1891, he was also New Zealand Champion in 1892 an...
Walter Reeks’ ‘Volunteer’ & Bailey’s ‘Viking’
Volunteer was built in October 1888 during a wave of large yacht construction in Sydney in which her designer, Walter Reeks, ...
Dumas in New Zealand
There have been many solo ocean passages and circumnavigations, but few as challenging in concept and timing as that of Argen...
Steeple-chasing the Otago mole: Professor R.J. Scott & Yvonne
Yvonne was one of nine entrants manoeuvring for the start of the Otago Yacht Club’s Rudder Cup Ocean Race to Oamaru and back....
The steeple-chaser
This is a tale with three players – R.J. Scott, the yacht Yvonne, and the mole at the entrance to Otago Harbour.
Tasmanian salvation: Te Rapunga
Built in the early 1920s in Germany, the iconic 32-foot double-ended ketch Te Rapunga is enjoying a complete restoration by T...
THE SPANISH FLU OF 1918 Lest we forget
It’s a grim fact that the current Covid-19 epidemic is just the latest in the waves of pandemics that have swept through huma...
Austin Powered
Low, sleek and powerful, an Austin-Healey sports car is a rare classic – prized by collectors all over the world. But rarer s...
The last of the Cape Horners
When a young Malcolm Pearson went to sea the world was a different place. It was a time after WWII, but before the rise of p...
The Hewsons part 2: The Jagger brothers & John Burns
When Capt. John Carrick Hewson was drowned off his steamer Waitoa at Clevedon in 1896, his wife Ellen was left with eight chi...
Return to Dunkirk
The 27-foot Lady of Mann was lifeboat No 8 on the Isle of Man Steam Packet ship of the same name. Launched in 1930 the 3,104-...
Saving uWHILNA
An 18m 110-year old yawl lying in Wellington’s Mana Marina is a rare, surviving example of the work of her American designer ...
BOATING FAMILIES – The Freyberg boys, PART 2
The London-born Freyberg boys grew up in the hills of Wellington as thorough Kiwi lads, dare-devils with imposing physical st...
BOATING FAMILIES – The Freyberg boys
The Freyberg brothers had an overdose of daring in their DNA. They were all six-footers and strode through their lives, seemi...
THE SWALES FAMILY PART 2 – Change of focus
A second instalment about the maritime legacy that was the Swales family – and in this one the focus shifts to their launches...
Vintage outboards
Passion seems a strong emotion to apply to outboard engines – but it certainly applies to the members of the Antique Outboar...
Will Foote’s houseboat
New Zealand’s early 20th century sawmillers were a nomadic lot, and often devised unusual solutions to accommodate their life...
Frozen clues: Franklin’s ships found
Maritime archeologists are confident they’ll soon have a better idea of what caused the loss of the HMS Terror and H...
STREET’S TREASURE TROVE
A new exhibition at the New Zealand Maritime Museum celebrates the man behind the historic Fosters ship chandlery and one of ...
Southern girl – PASTIME PART 1
Pastime is one of the few South Island 19th century yachts to have survived in anything like her original form. She was built...