Issue date
The Owaka Yacht Club launched its new rescue boat on Sunday the 28 October. The launching was the culmination of some fund raising and securing of funders undertaken by the Club.
This in large measure was spearheaded by Annette White, the Club’s Treasurer, which saw her enthusiasm and a number of applications later being rewarded with the Club being allocated by Yachting New Zealand one of the Optimist World Championship rescue boats.
The new boat is named after Bill Cross, (pictured above) a life member and absolute stalwart of the Owaka Yacht Club. Bill has been associated with the Club for almost its entire existence.
Bill has an extensive memory of the sailing on the Hina Hina estuary where the Catlins River flows out to the sea. Bill (82yrs), who is still sailing on his Paper Tiger, though picks his weather now, has had an extensive involvement in centre board sailing in the region. He has sailed on the Z Class, R Class and Flying Fifteens. This has seen Bill sailing regularly not only on the Hina Hina estuary but also on the Otago Harbour, at Bluff for the oyster regattas, Lake Waihola, Lake Wanaka and was a regular for many years at the Marakura Yacht Club’s Easter regatta on Lake Te Anau.
Bill is a source of the rich local history of this area of South Otago with its timber industry, sailing ships in the estuary and the railway that used to service the area. He wrote a history of the Owaka Yacht Club to mark its 21st in 1984.
The new rescue boat is a far cry from the first rescue boat the club had which was made out of the spare plywood left over at the local High School after they had built six frostply class yachts as a school project. Other boats were purchased along the way with, at one stage, the Balclutha Boating Club assisting the club unofficially for a while after 1972.
Their last boat was, in the words of the Club secretary, Mark Preddy, well past its use by date so this latest boat will see the club in good stead for many years to come.
On the day of the launching it was put into immediate service with the setting of the course for the day in gusty conditions resulting in its first rescue when a new Paper Tiger sailor found the conditions just a bit too challenging.
