New Zealand Maid at Norsands Slipway, 2017. – Image Barbara Tucker
Back in 2004, recently arrived in Tasmania, we early discovered the joys of visiting Kettering with its Maritime history and aura, and the convenient ‘Mermaid Tavern’ right on the waterfront at the Bruny Island ferry terminal.
It was here that we first saw New Zealand Maid alongside the adjoining wharf, and that very first glimpse of this beautiful yacht kindled a fire in this old sailor’s heart that burns brightly to this day.
I stood on the deck above, entranced with the sheer beauty of the vessel, a perfect traditional 45’ gaff rigged ketch, for this was a vessel which truly bespoke ‘ocean going’. She sang of great swells and boundless seas roamed in company with the albatross, shearwater and even snow petrel. Of oceans from tropics to Antarctic ice, of humpback whales and friendly dolphins. Workmanlike and professional, she was no weekend sailor this one, but the real seaworthy seagoing thing.
Subsequently over the years we have come to consider the amazing Tuckers as more family than friends, and are still somewhat awed by their combined talents, from boat building to blue water sailors, adding adaptable parents, teachers and writers along the way.
New Zealand Maid turning. – Image Barbara Tucker
The story of the vessel is also the story of Jon and Babs Tucker, a story of romance and an enduring married partnership; with New Zealand Maid herself, intertwined in their lives throughout, from being a teenage dream in Nelson, New Zealand, Christchurch where they built her, to a farm on Bruny Island, complete with 40 spotted pardalotes, to protesting the nuclear testing off Mururoa part of the Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia, to even embarking on side adventures in Antarctica.
It is also the story of their amazing mostly seafaring sons, Ben, currently lecturing Maritime Studies, with odd stints running the barges in Antarctica and other maritime pursuits, Dan a renowned sculptor and maker of the fine bronze replica huskies at the Mawson’s Hut in Hobart, Josh who is a sail maker in New Zealand, Sam who is a yacht broker, to Matt, currently who works as a firefighter in Aviation Rescue in Hobart. All of whom spent much of their formative years aboard this amazing vessel, and all of whom have inherited their parent’s enduring love of the sea.
Both Babs and Jon have seafaring backgrounds in New Zealand, where Jon had sailed on his father’s boats, and Babs, who saw herself as a horsey girl, but had a boatbuilding family and tradition in Nelson.
But no-one tells the story better than Jon himself, and so in his own words, here is the story of the Tuckers and their construction of, and on-going love affair with, New Zealand Maid.
“As a 10 year-old Kiwi kid my mind was made up. I would build a 55ft clipper-bowed gaff schooner when I grew up. Endless hours were spent drawing endless pictures of the dream – deck plans, accommodation plans and rig. Especially rig. Even today – 56 years later – I can draw that schooner with my eyes closed. The red-haired girl next door was keen on the idea too, so we tied the knot and made plans.
Launch day in Lytelton – January 1979. – Image Barbara Tucker
Being teenage students, there were limitations. Rule number one, we were told, was that if you need to borrow money to buy plans, then definitely don’t do it. But when blueprints for LF Herreshoff’s gorgeous 45ft Mobjack ketch became available (from his former housekeeper who had inherited Marblehead Castle), the temptation was too great. Downsizing by 10ft was our excuse. We borrowed the money. Herreshoff’s 17 blueprints were accurate to 32nds of an inch, but needed lofting. The chicken farm down the road was being demolished, so the lofting platform and station frames steadily took shape, smelling somewhat of chook poo. Next we located a Christchurch market-garden due for subdivision.
With only a 12 month rental agreement, time-management was pressing. We agonised over a huge supply of recently milled Macrocarpa and Spotted Gum in the knowledge that we could construct barely even the massive backbone within our timeframe, let alone afford sufficient timber this quickly.
The early 70’s was a memorable era for amateur boat-builders. Ferro-cement had come of age, and many of the second-generation builds were impressive. My father had owned two and was hooked. The more I pondered, the more I was convinced that this form of construction was a viable option.
I read voraciously, visited back-yard builders and discussed conversion options with NZ’s prominent ferro designer, Brian Donovan. Our ketch was going to have a higher steel content than any other build in town. She needed to be capable of rounding the Horn.
At least I had ‘come into money’ now. As a first-year teacher my wages were hardly riches but selling our BSA helped. The strongback for our inverted build took shape in the cold of winter, and up went frames and stringers.
Anyone who has built a shapely vessel will know the pleasure of viewing a hull as it takes form. Barbara and I were over the moon. Our 10 month-old son Ben possibly felt it too – constantly under my feet as I commenced the tedium of fixing hundreds of metres of reinforcing rod and mesh.
Building an inverted hull has pros and cons, especially ferro. Our decision to use the two-shot plastering method (minimising the risk of voids within the 18mm thick hull), required us to right the armature prior to plastering. Using a crane and two Turfor winches, the operation went smoothly, and after the six week curing phase our beautifully fair bare hull was ready to load onto a truck shortly before our lease expired.
Our next temporary home was located in a house-moving yard. During the following 30 months, iroko decks were laid on macrocarpa beams, with a strip-planked cabin trunk. I became an expert in dovetailing and our family grew with the addition of another two boys.
Barbara proved herself time and again, balancing household necessities, motherhood and boatbuilding skills with a minimum of money and a rather preoccupied husband.
A new teaching job, 600 miles north, led to a premature launching without bulwarks or rig. Our glossy black hull was trucked through the Lyttelton tunnel and lowered into the water looking more like a canal barge than an ocean-capable vessel. Her masts – salvaged from a wrecked schooner – were strapped aboard and her maiden voyage under power needed earmuffs to muffle the exposed engine below decks.
During the following year, hauled out on the Napier club slipway, her Herreshoff lineage steadily became apparent. Her Mahogany upper aft bulwark gave her the scaled-down clipper-ship appearance, while her raked masts were stepped, along with booms and gaffs re-shaped from Oregon goal-posts.
True to my love of gaff rig – now a ketch rather than schooner – a topmast was added to the salvaged mainmast. This trading-ketch appearance did not go unnoticed.
New Zealand Maid – Norsands December 2017. – Image Barbara Tucker
The following year she was chartered to appear in the Bounty leaving England scenes of the Mel Gibson/Anthony Hopkins movie of the famous mutiny. Re-enactments of 19th Century events also followed, especially during NZ’s 150th Anniversary celebrations.
When two more sons arrived we hauled out and added a foc’sle cabin. By now we were itching to go foreign, snapping up the opportunity to enter the inaugural Napier-Chatham Island race, and winning on general handicap by 10 hours, with our five sons clapping on canvas (10 sails on one occasion).
New Zealand Maid was now our home, and was to remain so for over two decades as we trotted around the Pacific and Australia, with the boys regularly enrolled in the NZ Correspondence School. The French nuclear tests at Mururoa found us making the three week mid-winter Roaring Forties passage to the test zone as part of a protest flotilla.
Taking line honours in gaff division of the 2018 Tall Ships Race. – Image Debbie Whiting
A few years later Hobart became our home port, but now, over 40 years since New Zealand Maid’s first launching, Barbara and I are still enjoying living afloat, with six lively grandsons now taking turns to share the experience as we wander Pacific waters once again.”
This is the remarkable on-going story of this adventurous trans-Tasman family, and we are so fortunate in being able to share some of their adventures, and able to still have the privilege of seeing the beautiful Maid herself under sail, here and there!
