ABOUT CENTRE-BOARDS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 776, 24 September 1929, Page 14

ABOUT CENTRE-BOARDS

The first centre-board boat on the Waitemata seems to have been Spray; built in the “seventies”, a roomy craft ranking with the bigger boats. She was built by Morgan, but with the little experience that the boatmen of that period had of the new idea, they did not “cotton on” to the movable fin. It was supposed that the centre-board would do away with the need for ballast, but the first experimenters with the Spray discovered that the “fin” was no substitute for lead properly fastened. In those times ballast was not always secured against movement in a seaway; it is oh record that one economical man dug out of Stanley Point a number of solid shot (the Point was used by early warships for target practice) and placed them in his boat for ballast. The end came in the Rangitoto Channel when the shot rolled and the boat sank. Spray was regarded as somewhat of a failure until more curious men found out that too much ballast held her down and too little was a danger. The use of the “fin” to help a boat going to windward was gradually learned, and since then the centre-board has taken its rightful place. A curious fact about the use of the centre-board was revealed when Von Luckner was captured with the scow Moa, which he and his men had taken. They could not get the scow to sail and the crew would not tell them the secret —that the “board” was used only to stop keeling. It was several days before a Dutchman among the prisoner crew became sufficiently communicative to tell how to use the centre-board. The old Spray was followed by The Brothers, a centreboard built by the Hunt Bros., of Riverhead. She capsized in the Waiheke Channel and one man, Ike Hunt, managed to swim to the Tamaki, bein£ two hours in the water. The Hunts were well known in early shipbuilding from the fact that they, constructed a steamer to lift the subsidy offered for a steamer ferry service to the North Shore. The most remarkable part of the steamer was that she had a brick chimney, instead of Qie later iron funnel type.