Friday 23 March 2012

Tiare Taporo

Hi,
I have just come across your website (www.pacificschooners.com)  detailing the conversion (in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia) and renaming as "Tiare Taporo" of your ex North Sea trawler for her new life in the Cook Islands. This is especially interesting to me as I am a member of the family that descended from A.B. Donald.
My name is James (Jim) Bell Donald and I am a great grandson of Alexander Bell Donald. I worked in Auckland for a subsidiary company of A.B. Donald Ltd. from 1965 to 1973 when all the businesses were sold. This included our trading businesses in the Cook Islands and Tahiti. The schooner "Tiare Taporo" had been sold some years earlier in 1964. In 1968 I travelled to Rarotonga on another of our vessels "Akatere" which was a steel built 110' motor ship which had been built in Holland in 1948 and was typical of the myriad of ex European coaster type vessels in the Pacific at that time. The skipper on that passage was Archie Pickering (a Fijian) and Andy Thomson was also a passenger. He taught me how to use a sextant during the voyage. I still have a couple of letters from him. While in the Cooks I travelled around the group on the "Akatere" visiting Mangaia, Aitutaki, Penrhyn, Rakahanga and Manihiki. I used to visit Andy at his little house at Arorangi on Rarotonga on Sunday afternoons and he told me many a fascinating tale of the old South Pacific over a bottle of whisky!
I have the original specs of the Tiare from Charles Bailey and the contract to build her signed by him. Incidentally, Capt. Winchester (the first skipper) was a 50% shareholder in the Tiare and in later years my great grandfather purchased his share thus becoming sole owner. In 1966 I had built by Percy Vos (a well known Auckland boatbuilder) a 12' clinker sailing dinghy which I named "Tiare Taporo II" and then in 2002 I bought a 38' Gauntlet design yacht. She had been carvel built of NZ Kauri in Wellington NZ and launched in 1978 as "Reflections of Wellington". Gauntlets were designed in England in the early 1930's as double ended cutter rigged racing/cruising yachts.
During an extensive refit in Whangarei, NZ in 2008/09 at the Norsand Boatyard I renamed her "Tiare Taporo III" and, as I had ambitions to sail offshore, I registered her as a NZ Ship (Regd. No. NZ1572). My girlfriend Jean (Gina) and I sailed from NZ in July 2011 and after a time in New Caledonia during which we circumnavigated NC we sailed in November last year to Bundaberg, Queensland. We are still here and in fact only yesterday hauled out for antifouling before our planned departure in mid April for Darwin, Indonesia and Malaysia. As I write this we are living on the boat in the Port Bundaberg Boatyard and it is now 0400 on March 24th. We are looking forward to some scraping and sanding today!!
It was great to read of your enterprise and I wish you all the best with it. Any boat with the famous old name of "Tiare Taporo" must be a lucky ship.By the way, I had always understood that the name Tiare Taporo came about as the result of a family discussion around the Donald dining room table! I hope we can keep in touch and share our various adventures. You can read about our past and current adventures on our blogsite - see below.
With best regards,
Jim Donald
s.v. Tiare Taporo III
Port Bundaberg Marina and Boatyard,
Bundaberg
Queensland 4670
AUSTRALIA
Ph. 04 294 71895
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2 comments:

  1. sailaway.bruce1 March 2013 at 14:56

    Hello Tiare Taporo III

    I found you after looking at the trawler refurbishing project in Nova Scotia.

    I also have a connection with Capt. Winchester. His daughter, Sarah "Lala" Winchester, married James Norman Hall, in Tahiti, 1925. He wrote many books including "The Bounty Trilogy"). Her mother was part of the Royal family of Tahiti. They had 2 kids, Conrad and Nancy. When Conrad was little, his maternal Grandfather, gave him his own little island, which the family still owns. Conrad became an Oscar winning cinematographer. I worked with him on many different projects before he died. I am good friends with his kids, Conrad Jr., Naia, and Kate.

    Recently I listened to Hall's first book, "Faery Lands of the South Seas", written in 1921. It's on a Free (public domain) Audio Book site:

    http://librivox.org/faery-lands-of-the-south-seas/

    It's about a trip he took on a trading schooner, shortly after arriving in Tahiti in 1920. It's very good.

    It's also available on Google Books, as a free eBook:
    http://books.google.com/books/about/Faery_lands_of_the_South_seas.html?id=1N0RAAAAYAAJ

    For more on James Norman Hall and Sarah "Lala" Winchester Hall:
    http://www.jamesnormanhallhome.pf/indexen.html

    I grew up near Hilo, Hawaii, from 1945 - 1955, on the edge of the tidepools. Anyway, I love the ocean, and have joined boats thru www.findacrew.com . . . 3 in the Med, 2 in the South Pacific (Tonga, Samoa, Fiji)

    If you email me, I can send some other stuff that might interest you.

    Cheers,

    Bruce Byall sailaway.b@gmail.com

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  2. ringydingydo27 October 2013 at 13:09

    I am reading Seven Seas on a Shoe String by Dwight Long, c 1938, and he mentions that Captain Viggo Rothmenson's schooner, Tiare Taporo, visits Penrhyn twice annually. Thought is would be interesting to look for it on the web and found your blog.

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