Hornblower Hornblower, she gotta go—by Wednesday! 

author Cimino
published 20250213
footnoted 20230221

Decade Later She Gotta Go: Her builders having sold 590 Mahurangi West Road to a much younger and much more energetic couple, the Hornblower  urgently requires new digs. In a perfect world, she’d be renovated and restored as a community project, with the proceeds going towards establishing, for example, a capacious community workshop, handy to the Mahurangi West Hall. image Cimino Cole

Louie Louie, me gotta go
Louie Louie, me gotta go
Richard Berry, 1955

Built for a horn-playing son whose mother, as a schoolgirl, daily rowed across and along the Mahakipawa Arm and back, the diminutive flat-bottomed Hornblower  was designed to range no farther than the Pūhoi Show, and then only in settled weather. Michael Thorne, before commissioning his craft, had hired a variety of yachts, both power and sail, before confirming his suspicion that the ultra-shallow-draft oyster-punt-derived craft he experienced while working as a music teacher at Mahurangi College were his cup of tea, far from the frenzied crowds.

For her first two decades, the Hornblower  was the best-used pleasure craft in the Mahurangi Harbour. Powered by her distinctive, dulcet-toned single-cylinder marinized walking-tractor engine, she ranged from her half-tide Huawai Bay mooring only ever as far as Warkworth—the ultimate way to do the Christmas shopping, with frequent tea breaks back aboard—Saddle Island for never-to-be-forgotten grand­children’s birthday parties, and to Pūhoi for sublime annual show, regardless of tide.

Designed to be practical, as opposed to being character-boat, the Hornblower  nevertheless oozed timelessness. Fresh out of her Huawai Bay stocks, paint still hardening and epoxy resin still curing, berthed resplendent in Mahurangi Harbour’s tidehead townwhich, in any self-respecting, post-colonial world should usefully and proudly bear the name Mahurangi, in vast preference to “Warkworth”. Mahurangi, after all, is what its post office was originally named a small boy exclaimed of her to his friends:

Look at this neat old boat!

While delightful in many regards—from her John Cole-drawn trail boards to her duck-boarded transom, the inexperience of her designer–builder left the Hornblower  well short of best-of-class status, much less, masterpiece. For starters, she sat deeper in the water than some of her brethren, largely the result of a rushed redesign when the owner, anticipating relocating from city to harbour, opted for a smaller, dayboat, rather than the aquatic bachNew Zealand vernacular for the modest vacation cabin then on the drawing board. Sat deeper meant less stability, rendering the auxiliary spritsail suitable for deployment only in a zephyr, leading to the rig being abandoned, after years of free-loading. Also, the self-draining deck and was only marginally so, meaning with any sort of load the bungs needed to be hastily deployed, putting her in open-boat mode and at risk of destabilisation was green water to overcome her freeboard.

Publishing Adviser, Regatta Commentator, and Hornblower Owner: With historian Beverly Simmons vouching for its authenticity and print executive Michael Thorne identifying an economic route to its printing, the circa 1993 annual general meeting of the then Friends of the Mahurangi was given the confidence to commit to publish meat scientist Dr Ronald Locker’s non-technical magnum opus. image Mahurangi Magazine

Fortunately, the remedy to the Hornblower ’s most grievous design defect—her deck’s vulnerability to free-surface-effect-induced loss of stability—would instantly become her most attractive feature: generous side decks—the result of giving her buoyant bulwarks. A further hazard would also be eliminated: Slab-sided flat-bottomed craft—famously when beam on and boarding or landing personnel at shelving beaches in a slight swell—can all to easily deliver a crippling crush injury to the incautiously positioned foot, as the full tonnage of the craft descends onto firm sand. A gently radiused chine would be the perfect solution, particularly if it could be fashioned from deformable material.

Contribution to anthropogenic global warming of the diesel burned by the craft’s 10-hp Dongfeng engine, compared to the contemporaneous motorhome would have been laughably derisory, given the few nautical miles amassed, even before her protracted sojourn ashore. That notwithstanding, if she ranged as modestly as she did before her retirement, she could readily be battery powered by, for example, economic, fully recyclable agm batteries. Such a conversion would be a first, driving via the elegant retracting propeller and shaft system that practically designed itself for use in the oyster-punt inboard conversion circa 1976 that created the working oyster barge Brain of Pooh —long since use-shortened to plain “Pooh”.

With its builderthis writer terrorised into doing an Odysseus and seeking with urgency to relocate to where he might be mistaken for a snivelling winnowing-shovel-carrying Mainlander, hundreds of river kilometres from the coast, the Hornblower  herself, gotta go. During the decade she sat patiently beside Mahurangi West Road, above Ōpahi, the Hornblower  attracted a steady stream of admirers, all politely turned away on account of her strong sentimental value to those nurturing lifetime memories, made aboard. But built from high-grade tanalised construction ply, silicon-bronze fastened and epoxy glued, as decrepit as the Hornblower  undeniably appears, she’s solid as the proverbial… Speaking of toilet facilities, a distinct advantage of deep-sixing the Dongfeng would be that a discrete but spacious, veritable changing room could be created, civilising the picnic boat beyond recognition.

While the Hornblower ’s renovation would make a superb swansong for the writer, logisticallyaside from any other practicality, proximity to navigable waterway, salt or fresh it would make for a nightmare. Whether, however, any soul who, in the past offered to provide her a loving new home can now be interested, on a free-to-a-good-home basis, is in the lap of the godsIncluding, of course, Poseidon himself.

 

Deed of gift The owners of the Hornblower  offer free of charge, first refusal to Mahurangi Marquee & Regatta Inc.the name suggested by member 19 Feb. 2025 for the organisation founded 1974 as Friends of the Mahurangi and currently legally known by the suboptimal name “Mahurangi Action Incorporated” for any of the following purposes:

1	Sale “as is”as-is, but not currently exactly where-is as protected-water houseboat—powered or otherwise—with proceeds to help fund a lockable trailer for Mahurangi Harbour community marquee;
2	renovation and/or restoration for sale as protected-water houseboat—powered or otherwise—with proceeds to blitz the funding of a lockable trailer for Mahurangi Harbour community marquee;
3	ditto, as private playhouse/sleepout, with proceeds to help fund a lockable trailer for Mahurangi Harbour community marquee;
4	renovation as community playground amenity. Popularly suggested location—Mahurangi West Hall; or
5	other purpose, of benefit either to the community marquee operation or other Mahurangi Harbour community project.

 

Phone or message me +64 27 462 4872, or email editor @ mahurangi . org . nz 

 

 

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