Double hulled sailing waka in NZ

[J P]

I mentioned this in another thread in P&P.
http://www.woodenboat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=75729

I was visiting a friend in Gulf Harbour NZ and while out on the docks gawking at the yachts I wandered over to check this boat out. Aotearoa One. A gal, Liz, was on board doing some maintenance and invited us for a look-see. Interesting juxtaposition of modern and trad. It surprised me that it had 20 berths. Each hull had two compartments, six bunks in the aft, and four forward. I dropped down thru a hatch in to one and it was pretty spartan, just wood bunks and no portlights. I think the only other accommodations are the deck house.










She said it really creaks and groans when under way with all the flexibility in the lashings. I think she said they have taken it as far as Gisborn but haven’t been on any open ocean passages yet.

[J P]

Chip-Skiff, hope you don't mind me quoting you from the other thread. Adds some interesting background. Wish I could remember more of what Liz told me about the boat and the program. I was in gawk mode.

Refering to the second to last picture above.

That's the stern carving of the big waka unua that's tied up at Gulf Harbour. It's a modern design based on traditional Polynesian voyaging canoes, with an eye to being legal (and practical) for sail training and charter. Beautiful job of boatbuilding. There's another waka unua, rather older and plainer, up at Mangonui.

I talked to Potaka Taite, a Mäori musician who also teaches traditional nautical arts and is one of the skippers of Aotearoa One. He said they were planning to take it to Raratonga, which would backtrace the original voyages that populated the two islands known as New Zealand. As a navigator, he described the ways of tacking and wearing the rig, and also observed that when sailing blue water, he always kept an eye on the wake, rather than looking ahead, because the wake would tell him how well the boat was being steered with respect to the wind.

Last time I was in NZ I got to drive an Americas Cup yacht, NZL 41, on a charter from the Viaduct Basin. Next time, I'd like to sail on this waka. What a beauty!

If you take the daytrip from Auckland to Tiritiri Matangi (stunning) the ferry stops in Gulf Harbour and you can get a look at this boat.

(I've got some nice photos, but this buggery interface won't accept anything bigger than a postage stamp.)

In any event, my Northland must-sees would include Hokianga Harbour, Ahipara, Te Reinga, Spirits Bay, Matai (or Maitai) Bay, and the Rawhiti - Cape Brett area in the Bay of Islands.

cheers, Chip

[bamamick]

The dude at the front of the boat looks like he is suffering from sea sickness.

Mickey Lake

[J P]

And no cooling fan like the dude in the back.

[AO1Kaihautu]

Hi all,

Stuart here. I'm the skipper of Aotearoa One- hence my moniker, Kaihautu means skipper or captain, though It seems a bit formal now I've looked around the site a bit. Please bear with me.
Aotearoa One in Te Reo ('the language' which is Maori) is a Waka Hourua, double hulled voyaging canoe. She is representative in aspects of the Waka that brought Maori to Aotearoa New Zealand. Her hulls are a mix of Samoan Va'atele and Tahitian Pahi designs, and her sail plan is a mix of Marguesan and Cook Islands practice.
She now has a capacity of 26 including 6 crew. There is no accommodation in the deckhouse, just cooking, navigation and storage facilities as well as a table that can fit a cosy 11 for dinner.
She has a sail area of 176 sq m, and can sustain a speed of 11knots. In the right conditions we can sail at up to 8knots in less than 12 windspeed.
Her purpose? Education. In many and various forms.
As you may have guessed, I'm more than a bit happy being her skipper. Thanks for the comments!

Regards

Stuart

[Paul Pless]

Welcome to the forum Stuart. Interesting boat you command there.

[AO1Kaihautu]

Thanks Paul,

yes, amazingly capable. With a draft of only 1.2m, we only make about 10 degrees of leeway once we are doing more than 5 knots.

-Just an example of some of the surprises I've had.

They knew what they were doing!

Cheers

Stuart

[PeterSibley]

Thanks for posting ...and welcome !

[J P]

What a pleasant surprise to see this thread resurface! Good memories. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and experience here Stuart. Hope I didn’t botch up the info too bad in my tourist tale.

Fascinating boat. I wish I had taken some pictures of the double rudder/tiller arrangement. I remember commenting to Liz that it looked like a handful and she said, no, it was nicely balanced and handled quite well. She mentioned something about it going through some kind of modification at the time but I didn’t catch the details. So many interesting things to look at.

From the other side of the world, and far from the sea, please pass on our thanks to Liz for so graciously taking the time to show us the boat. (We were the couple with the Montana accent, surely she’ll remember that )

Many enjoyable, safe, and educational voyages to you and Aotearoa One.

Cheers,
JP

P.S. Stuart, have you looked at this thread?
http://www.woodenboat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=84324
from the Building/Repair part of the forum.

[StuartB]

Hi JP, it's taken ages for me to reply, sorry for that. They were installed as a safety issue for heavy weather and to allow for efficient operation in close quarter manouevring, which the traditional waka were never designed for. (Aotearoa One weighs 34 tonne in the water).

The double rudder/tiller arrangement was essentially designed by me, then checked and specified for strength by a Naval Architect.

I had to design something that would allow for the rudders to work up to a maximum of about thirty degrees, whilst ensuring that the rudders could not oversteer- or the tillers extend too far over the side.

The tillers are therefore inward canted, and the crossbeam goes across the very ends. What I wanted to achieve has worked, and the rudder angles travel very close to the path they would follow given the turning angle and the width between hulls.

Actuality has taught me that the inward rudder stalls beyond about twenty degrees. This is more than ok whilst sailing. When motoring the whole of the blade is exposed to prop thrust and it works as desired.

Hope you don't mind the explanation, but it was one of those things that took up a lot of my thinking at the time, and I am very pleased with the results.

Thanks for the interest!

Stuart

[Chip-skiff]

Kia ora, Stuart—

Since I learned how to get them up on this forum, here are a couple more photos:



The above shows the general layout and scale of the craft.

This shows the stern(s) and part of the steering gear.



I was knocked out by it: what a beauty of a boat.