Finding Fred Anderson’s punt and sailing with the scow pilot

Beau’s Back: Mark Kirby and Frederick ‘Beau’ Jackson sailing the Anderson punt, circa early 1970s. In his youth, Beau piloted scows on the Mahurangi River. photographer Lindsay Kirby

Must have been in the late 1960s I think. Lindsay and I found the punt ashore in Lagoon Bay.

We took it back to Rodmersham where Lindsay’s father, Gladwyn Wynyard, recognised it as one that Fred Anderson had built for himself years before.

He rang Mrs Anderson who said something like:

Thank you Glad, but I’m rather busy at the moment. We don’t want it back; you can keep it

So it became part of our little flotilla. It needed a bit of TLC, particularly the bottom so I trailered it down to Dave Jackson, a boat builder in Northcote. Dave strengthened her here and there, and added a full-length plywood bottom. The spars and sail were added later—she went like a witch downwind. I know Beau Jackson enjoyed sailing in her—it brought back memories of the days when Mahurangi punts were common. He reckoned that under the right conditions you could get them to sail across wet mud. When the scows still served Warkworth, skippers would take Beau aboard off Huawai Bay to pilot them upriver.

We used the Anderson punt for a number of years, generally with an outboard. I ferried a truckload of fence posts over from Beau’s place with her. I remember at one of the early Mahurangi regattas, one of the Sullivan boys and myself rowed her to victory in the race for Mahurangi punts. On another occasion I recall not being able to see the floorboards for kahawai.

In 1990 she was handed over to Friends of the Mahurangi, which in 1992 paid Shaun O’Connor to restore her. She lived for a time in what was once the Jackson’s boatshop—the property by then had become home to Beau’s nephew Temepara Morehu and his family. As a small boy, Temepara learned to row there in one of his grandfather’s Mahurangi punts.

After a period outside, more-or-less under cover, the Fred Anderson punt is again in need of restoration. Simon James is currently sheltering her. He and boatbuilder Kerry Miller took off her lines preparatory to building a pair of punts, of which the Penelope was completed in time for the 2007 regatta.