Mahurangi Regatta

Renaming Mahurangi Action  née Friends of the … as Mahurangi Regatta Inc.

author Cimino 20250209

Last of the Summer’s Southerlies: With a stiff northeasterly blowing, for a thanks-for-nothing change after weeks of southerlies, it was little surprise few visited the Mahurangi Regional Park – West, and there was no shortage of space to picnic. Normally, folk are hard-pressed to find room to spread a blanket, at the good old-fashioned, leave-your-wallet-at-home picnic regatta. Here, in what hopefully has adhered as a new, 2024– Mahurangi Regatta tradition, children share the labour of hefting the heavy hawser to the beach at Sullivans Bay, the smart way. photographer Grant Southam

For 48 years, the organisation that revived the Mahurangi Regatta and has not had Regatta  in its name. On the morning after the Mahu West Summer Fest, that which was established as Friends of the Mahurangi will—members willing—seek to be renamed Mahurangi Regatta Incorporated, styled:

Mahurangi Regatta Inc.
established 1974 as
Friends of the Mahurangi

Site of the Auckland region’s short-lived first European settlement, the Mahurangi Harbour landscape survived as the unbuilt backdrop for the regatta that evolved during its boatbuilding era, dating from 1849. While the proximate concern was the inherently inappropriate solution planned for Warkworth’s wastewater treatment plant, protection of the miraculously spared indigenous-forest-and-exotic-pasture landscape, so close to the Auckland metropolis, was—along with world peace—founder John Male’s, abiding preoccupation.

Concerned to been seen as other-than an antisocial outfit interested only in objecting to council plans, Friends of the Mahurangi, as a one-off, organised a good old-fashioned, leave-your-wallet-at-home picnic regatta. Set in Sullivans Bay 1974 on regional parkland then not open to the public, much advertising was required, including signposts erected all the way from the little-known State Highway 1 turnoff onto a gravel road leading where few would have guessed lay “Auckland’s best-kept secret”.

Wastewater continued to preoccupy Friends of the Mahurangi, fighting off plans for Dawsons Creek to be the “temporary” discharge point for Rodney County Council’s new Mahurangi Peninsula oxidation ponds. The writer’s concern when, elected the lead the organisation in 1987, was that it had become little more than a regatta committee. Having quietly turned 50 on 17 December 2024, however, it cannot be argued that, of its achievements, the organisation overwhelmingly owes its leadership legitimacy to its 48-year-long role as principal Mahurangi Regatta organiser. To cleave to the compromise name adopted in 2011—Action  was added to the elegant, proposed, Mahurangi Incorporated—at the expense of Regatta , would be to perversely deny the organisation’s 1977 revival of it, and that of its big-band-themed prize-giving dance, in 2004.

This article, meanwhile, is a work in progress, in the interests of publishing while is still provides a week’s notice of the 16 February meeting…

 

Notice of renaming and repurposing meeting

An annual and special meeting of Mahurangi Action Incorporated will be held:

9 AM Sunday 16 February Mahurangi Harbour Community Marquee Mahurangi West Hall 401 Mahurangi West Road

Agenda

Performance Report 2024
Election of officers and committee
Renaming and repurposing
Amended objects
Proposed meetings
1.) Mahurangi Regatta shoreside events – Sullivans Bay and  Scotts Landing
2.) Inter-organisational Mahurangi Regatta meeting
3.) Anniversary-weekend-event collaboration

Notices of motion

I move that Mahurangi Action Incorporated be renamed Mahurangi Regatta Incorporated and repurposed with the principal object being to organise and conduct the annual Mahurangi Regatta with and for the benefit of the wider Mahurangi and regional regatta community.
Cimino Cole
I move that the renamed organisation be styled:
Mahurangi Regatta Inc.
established 1974 as
Friends of the Mahurangi
Cimino Cole

Nominations

Nick Carnachan, incumbent, nominated
Kevin Finn, nominated
Hugh Gladwell, incumbent, nominated
Cam McKay incumbent, nominated
Borislav Penchev, nominated
Ari Robertson incumbent, nominated

Resignations from office/committee

Cimino Cole legal requirement following his personal name change
Jim Dollimore* see below
Kelsay Grovehills Mahurangi Action was honoured to provide umbrella services to CHArt
Mike Neil** from committee, to concentrate on Mahu West Pest work

*As the earliest-serving surviving committee member, I salute the service of second-earliest-serving surviving committee member, Jim Dollimore, to this organisation and to the Mahurangi Harbour. Cimino
**Similarly, Mike Neil, for his 32 years and counting as a member and his more than 22-year service as a committee member, and, as a Mahurangi farmer, his council-ignored, practical, mitigation demonstration addressing the Mahurangi Harbour’s elevated sediment accumulation rate. Cimino

Regatta bottom-line :

Bounteously book-ending Auckland Anniversary weekend is all well and good, but it is demanding of Mahurangi Regatta crew, with local stalwarts typically juggling duties with hosting visiting family and friends. One strategy could help here: Warn prospective visitors the price of choosing Auckland Anniversary weekend is joining the shoreside-regatta crew:

1. more volunteers are always  needed on the Saturday, so


2. call Kevin Finn on +64 27 478 7476 and sign-up for 2026!

 

Mahurangi Regatta name change from Mahurangi Action Incorporated proposed Inc. milestones