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In 1986 former Vice
Commodore of the Royal Yacht Club of Victoria Mr Hank P Schilte, heard the
vessel was for sale and drew up a rescue plan for restoration of one of
the world’s classic racing yachts.
The first stage was to
secure enough information about the Waitangi so that an accurate as
possible a reconstruction could be attempted. Advertisements in New
Zealand Yachting magazines and the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron
newsletter achieved enormous results.
In 1992 the syndicate
headed by Mr Hank P Schilte, Col Anderson, A (Tony) Clarkson, Lyle Close,
David Currie, Phillip Morrissey, Rob Sallabank, Douglas Shields, Bruce
Taylor and Steve Thistlethwaite, drew up a rescue plan for the
restoration, Doug Shields and Col Anderson took on the main thrust of the
rebuilding project.
The syndicate signed
on Melbourne shipwright John Johnson and Kevin Bach, a former Fremantle
shipwright. The boat was totally stripped inside and out and the deck,
bulwarks and rudder removed leaving a bare shell with just the stringers
and lead on the bottom. The timber in the boat was very wet and left for
eight weeks to dry out.
Then starting at the
bow, the vessel was progressively refastened, each roving was ground off,
each nail was replaced with one of a larger gauge and the roving replaced.
This meant replacing more than 3000 nails and rovings and 1500 screws.
The syndicate was
delighted with the result, the hull had no rot whatsoever, not even where
the garboard seam and lead joins the boat, deck was completely
reconstructed with beams cut from 100 year old Kauri, the timber had
originally come from the, now demolished Wanganui railway station on the
west coast of New Zealand’s North Island. The interior work was in
mahogany and painted white like the original highly glossed immaculate
varnish work creates a glamorous feel of a bygone era.
The massive boom is
43 feet long, while the mast is hollow, made in eight sections and glued
together, Col Anderson of Hood Sails Melbourne was responsible for the
rigging and sails, the standing rigging is all 6X7 galvanizes wire which
has been hand-spliced and served. The running rigging is Marlow Pro-hemp
rope. Colin Anderson built the sails from a cloth Hood developed overseas
using a mixture of old and new techniques, called Hood Irish Classic
Dacron. Fittings such as the press rings in the corner of the sails have
been made from cast bronze, instead of modern stainless steel and the
sails have been cut with narrow panels to give them a traditional look.
The cloth is cream and blends nicely with the black hull and it’s gold
scrolled work.
The restoration was
completed on time for the boat’s 100th anniversary on 13th December,
1994, Waitangi was recommissioned by the New Zealand Consul-General in
Melbourne Yan Flint at a ceremony held at the Royal Yacht Club of Victoria. |
