Scott descendant laying the keel
Typical of Friend: Rather than advertise his charter business in the January Mahurangi Magazine, Rob Thexton chose to support Friends of the Mahurangi’s publication: Jade River: A History of the Mahurangi.
It is an eternity since the inevitable was accepted.
That ‘the Mahurangi’ would need a website. But observing the various efforts, back in the dawning of the internet, it was concluded, better perhaps to have no web presence, than a site typical of the time.
Few sites gave the visitor much reason to ever return, much-less to return regularly. So it was resolved to not instigate the building of a website until it could be done well, and not before a useful percentage of friends of the Mahurangi had become regular web users.
In a perfect world, that might have been the way the website was developed. The reality, of course, has been very different. Internet access gained critical mass in Aotearoa sooner than most imagined, fuelled partly by canny seniors drawn to the economies and utility of email. The turning point was supporter Rob Thexton emailing recently:
Where’s your website? I’m in the process of dummying up web pages … I wanted to link to mahurangi.org.nz but it appears not to exist at present—what can you tell me?
Earlier when Rob Thexton and his mother, Shirley Thexton (née Scott) of Scotts Landing, had bought copies of Jade River: A History of the Mahurangi, Rod had offered:
I don’t know what I can do, but if you need any help…
And it wasn’t long before Rob’s offer was taken up. His bare boat hire business CharterLink generously sponsored a full-page display advertisement for our history of the Mahurangi in the January Mahurangi Magazine.
When Rob took over CharterLink, it had a website that was possibly worse than not having a website. That was some years ago, but not so many that Rob had forgotten what it was like to be thrown in the deep end. Within a week Rob had built the editor a paddling pool, taught him to use a kickboard, and saved him from drowning a couple or three times.
This site has a long way to go before it is the knock-their-socks-off site envisaged in a perfect world. But with lots of stories on the likes of that wonderful, whimsical friend of the Mahurangi, Rob Thexton, it promises to become compelling.
And with the occasional mayday to a shipbuilder’s grandson.