Three men in a tub

• Published date: 21 January 2023
• Publication title: Mix, The

Our journey began with an online auction listing, one that seemed almost too good to be true

My friend, let’s call him Harold, had been looking to buy a yacht for some time. He had fond memories of his previous yacht, Jewel, that his equally enthusiastic wife Marlene sailed and raced inside and outside Otago Harbour.

The yacht on the auction site ticked many boxes. Forty-foot (12m) long, tick. Steel, tick. Self-furling genoa, tick. Gas oven, tick. Volvo Penta diesel engine, tick. Self-steering, solar panels, water maker, four berths, tick, tick, tick, tick.

The telephone conversation with the seller went something like this:

Harold: ‘‘I’d like to buy your yacht’’.

The seller: ‘‘I have someone coming to look at it tomorrow’’.

Harold: ‘‘I don’t want to look at it, I’d like to buy it. I’ll put the money in your account tonight’’.

That was February 2021.

Did I mention that the yacht was moored in Whangaroa Harbour?

This picturesque inlet, 35km northwest of Kerikeri in the Far North, is surrounded by lush forest, beautiful beaches and not much else. There is a pub and a fishing club, the latter’s walls adorned with trophy monsters from the deep, where you can sign the guest book and enjoy the hospitality at club members’ prices.

But back to the boat, and this is a bit of a spoiler alert, when the seller posted the yacht for sale online, they had used the photographs the previous owner took when he sold the yacht some 14 years earlier.

Anyway, Harold casually dropped his purchase into conversation one evening, extending the opportunity to a mutual friend, let’s call him Ate, and me to help him sail it home. Ate was a wise choice for crew; a former commercial fisherman, handy mechanic and qualified offshore skipper. I can only think it was my schoolboy experience sailing a learner’s P Class yacht on Lake Wanaka that secured my berth.

Harold and Marlene shot up first to have a look. Turn right at the Whangaroa oyster farm, they were told, then follow a gravel road to an isolated bay. And there she was. Moored several hundred metres offshore she looked a picture. A tall mast, sleek fore deck, covered cockpit, white hull and complementing blue stripes at water line and deck level. Lovely.

However, having borrowed a handy dingy for a close-up inspection, those first impressions quickly began to show signs of wear. The rusty stains were to be expected on a steel yacht at anchor for a prolonged period — upwards of five years — but the fishy compost smell was not. Generations of white-faced herons had encrusted everywhere on the yacht they could reach. Nests, feathers and guano littered the cockpit, galley, lounge and master cabin as well as thick coverings on the deck.

Two days of evicting the herons, chipping and scrubbing, saw the interior almost habitable by humans — leaving just enough time to secure the yacht from another avian invasion before heading home.

Oh, and most of the sails were shot too.

But by early 2022 the sail maker had fitted new sails, as well as bird-proof cockpit covers, and Harold and family enjoyed a great northern holiday — which included the bonus of hand-sized oysters cleaned from the hull.

Nymph, the yacht, then rocked patiently at her mooring until mid-October before Ate and Harold, each laden with overweight bags full of all manner of tools (just in case), jetted north.

There was little time to take in the Whangaroa scenery as Nymph was due to be hoisted from the water in Whangarei two days later. So, rising before dawn the next day they motored out the harbour entrance at...