New Zealand Maid began her gestation in Christchurch 1974, shortly after Ben completed his. It’s a long slow road when you are penniless young parents barely out of your teens.
She began her life afloat in January 1979, launched as Aeolus in Lyttelton Harbour before motoring 400 miles north to Napier where she was rigged with a pair of masts salvaged from a wrecked schooner, and gaffs, booms and topmast fashioned from old oregon goalposts.
Her early years were full of excitement:
Making challenging 300 mile Wairarapa coast passages south to the Marlborough Sounds…
…sail training with the Maori boys from Te Aute College…
…and filming the ‘Bounty leaving England’ sequences for The Bounty with Mel Gibson, Anthony Hopkins, Liam Neeson and Daniel Day-Lewis in the movie about the famous mutiny.
Eventually after our 4th and fifth sons (Sam and Matt) were born we decided that an interior rebuild was necessary including adding a fo’csle cabin, she was trucked to our backyard again for a while for her new rimu interior joinery and a pair of brand new masts built of Canadian oregon in the school woodwork room)
She was relaunched in January 1990 with her new name New Zealand Maid, and immediately sailed south to be one of the three traditional vessels in various 150thcelebration re-enactments.
In 1991 we gave up our jobs and sailed away, rather spectacularly, as a contestant in the inaugural Napier to Chatham Islands ocean race (winning on handicap by 13 hours). Having all five boys as crew, we managed to fly eleven sails simultaneously throughout the second day before the Nor-wester built.
There has historically been significant loss of life on the route between NZ and the Chathams, and the race has never been repeated (click here for our experience)
Then followed many memorable years living aboard with boxes of correspondence schoolwork ranging from grades one to twelve.
Highlights included a mid-winter Southern Ocean voyage to Moruroa in 1995, protesting the resumption of French nuclear tests (click here)
and two Sydney to Hobart Classic flotilla cruises (shown here powering up the Derwent in a 50 knot gale, fully reefed down)…
… as well as more time in the Pacific before shifting base to Tasmania’s Bruny Island.
In 2016 Babs and Jon retired back afloat, with a midwinter Hobart to Stewart Island passage and subsequently wandering around previously unexplored parts of the New Zealand coastline between other fun expeditions and Pacific voyages with grandchildren.
Currently based in New Zealand’s ‘winterless north’, Jon and Babs are busy with writing and photography, the occasional classic race (pictured here taking gaff rig line honours in the 2018 Tall Ships’ Race at Russell) and planning further voyages into the Pacific.