Nordic rescue: Classic redemption

It’s been a hard five years getting to this point, though. Sam first laid eyes on Nordic back in 2019, after he lost all his savings buying a 36-foot (11m) steel yacht with his brother, which turned out to be structurally unsound. He kept the mast and sails, sold the hull for scrap and ended up with about $1,500 in his pocket.

Fortunately, that’s what he needed to put a deposit on the 26-foot (8m) cutter-rigged double-ender Nordic, lying neglected and unloved except by a thick growth of marine life in Ōhiwa Harbour, near Whakatāne. After scraping some more money together and sailing her back to Auckland with the aid of a ship’s compass and a large-scale map, the hard work of restoring her to her former glory began.

Nordic’s lines come from a plan originally drawn by American naval architect Philip Rhodes in 1926. Christchurch boatie Max Peek bought a set of plans in 1933 and built her over a period of a decade, pausing briefly during World War II. She was launched at Easter 1948 at Redcliffs, on the Avon-Heathcote estuary near Sumner, Christchurch.

After about ten years of adventures, Peek sold her to the Lloyd family of Christchurch in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Sadly, she was involved in a tragedy in 1962 when the Lloyds headed off in her to cruise the Pacific. The family was caught in bad weather off the coast of Leigh, north of Auckland, and Nordic went aground at what is still known to locals as Nordic Bay. Mrs Lloyd had gone below to discover both their young children had been affected by carbon monoxide poisoning from the yacht’s engine, and when the parents decided to run for Leigh Harbour to get help, they misjudged the harbour entrance. Sadly, the youngest child died from the poisoning.

Nordic was then salvaged and rebuilt by Claude Greenwood of Whangateau, and cruised the Hauraki Gulf for several years before Lew Peek, son of the original builder, bought her back and returned her to Canterbury in 1969. Lew circumnavigated the South Island in her in 1977. She was then sold again and slipped into obscurity for years, her condition deteriorating, before she came into Sam’s capable hands.

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Sam has assembled an impressive collection of papers, photographs, even videos of the yacht over her lifespan. “After the first article appeared in Boating, the granddaughter of Max Peek saw it and got in touch with us,” he says. “She had a lot of images of the construction, as well as Super-8 film of Max doing everything from pouring the lead for the keel to shaping up the mast and many tasks in between. She came up and saw the boat just before we headed off on the trip and she’s so happy with what we’ve done with it.”

Sam is by trade a carpenter, but he comes from a family of boatbuilders. However, his years of experience meticulously restoring Nordic would surely qualify him as a shipwright. He has made ends meet over the years of the restoration project working at the Maritime Museum on classic timber boats before starting his own business, Nordic Yacht Services, doing repairs on more modern craft, including teak restoration and varnishing, painting and antifouling, rigging and rope splicing. He’s learned a few tricks of the trade along the way, including how to steam-bend timber.

The first stage of her restoration began in 2020, when she was hauled out after the first lockdown and Sam spent six months stripping the hull back to bare timber, living inside the boat while in a shed at the Weiti Boating Club north of Auckland. (This stage of the restoration featured in Boating NZ in September that year.) Fortunately, beneath the thick growth of mussels and weed, Nordic’s carvel-planked hull – built of kauri, spotted gum and ironbark, with pōhutukawa knees – was sound, with only some small patches of rot.

With the boat back in the water, attention turned to the mast, which was looking a little worse for wear before 12 coats of varnish and all the standing and running rigging was replaced, with Wayne Olson of Horizon Boats generously allowing them the use of a corner of his shed to do it. Then it was time for the interior, but it was nearly another three years before she was ready to go to Fiji, in July 2024.

“We thought it would take three to six months and it ended up taking eighteen. We did the saloon and the aft end of the boat, taking everything back to bare timber,” Sam says.
“I learned from the first refit just how awful living on board could be, so we moved off and lived with Mum in Takapuna. I said to Jen, don’t even unpack, we’ll only be here for two months. Eighteen months later we finally moved out. . .Thank goodness for mums!”

Some minor changes were made to the interior layout: the pair of single berths in the bow were converted into a slightly more generous and practical double and a simple galley and head facilities were installed.

“We built the frame and carcass of the galley, removed it to prep and paint the hull before dropping it back in,” Sam says. “We searched for years to find an Origo pressurised meths stove, because we didn’t want to have gas. Jen’s father [in the UK] went on the hunt and found one in the Netherlands.”

The stove is not only safe to use – a meths flame can be put out with water – but its installation is a masterpiece of practical space-saving. Sam’s friend Julian Meyer designed and built a special welded stainless steel fitting which allows the stove to pivot out from the starboard cabin side when required while still allowing it to gimbal, then neatly stow away. For keeping food chilled, there’s a compact but efficient Dometic CFX 12V portable fridge, which draws very little power.

The head is aft to starboard, tucked away under a timber lid. “On small boats the toilet is usually under your pillow but I’d prefer it in the kitchen,” Sam says. “It used to have
a little composting toilet between the forward berths, but we got rid of that.” A lovely stainless bucket performing admirably for the years in between.

The quarterberth space on the starboard side is used for storage, while the port side is home to the diesel tank, with a small bench and sink forward of it. In the centre of the saloon, drop-leaves form a small table. Sam has also built and installed a beautiful new set of companionway steps.

While Sam has tried to keep her true to her original shape as possible, there have been
a few concessions to practicality and modernity: the gooseneck was raised to accommodate the new dodger, and solar panels were fitted on the bow. The last job before heading north involved Sam making a new companionway hatch and cover out of foam, glass and carbon, with a 12mm teak veneer to save weight but retain the classic look.

“My brother being a composite boatbuilder suggested I use carbon unis on the corners just so we can say the boat’s got carbon fibre in it,” Sam says.

Nordic was powered from the early 1960s by an air-cooled Lister diesel, complete with original receipts, which was still going strong when Sam bought the boat. However, its time was up when the interior refit was carried out. “It used to take up the whole aft third of the boat, and it was quite noisy, having no engine box around it” Sam says. New Iroko fore-and-aft engine bearers were installed between the old athwartship mounts to take a new and much smaller Beta 20hp diesel, which is now confined to a sound-insulated box under the stairs, “so now we can actually hear each other speak when it’s running,” Sam says.

All the deck gear – traditional wooden cleats and turning blocks, not a clutch or winch in sight – have been made by Sam or revarnished, as has the cap rail which runs right around the deck. Originally made of kauri, Sam has replaced it with teak: “That was a steep learning curve, we had to learn how to steam-bend on the double as the boat was due out of the shed and teak doesn’t like to bend very much when dry!” Sam says. “There was plenty of help from the Weiti locals when it came time to bend the timber on to the jig or coming up with ideas, with several iterations of steam box being tried before settling on the final method.”

The original spars now have Dyneema standing rigging for strength and longevity (“We’ve gone a bit mad with the rigging,” Sam admits), “she’s got to be one of the only classics around running tweakers for the jib and staysail sheets, a little on the modern side but very practical.” The sail plan and sails are new, although the original outline of a gaff main with topsail has been adhered to (with the addition of a modern gennaker to fly off the bowsprit and a battened main). In a twist of coincidence, Sam was recommended to track down a traditional sailmaker in the Coromandel, who turned out to be the father of his friend Julian who has helped to work on the boat throughout the project, as well as helping deliver Nordic to Fiji.

In order to head offshore, Nordic needed to get Category 1 certification, which mostly involved the addition of navigational and safety gear, such as the AIS system and a lightweight four-man liferaft which sits on the port bunk. Because the yacht is officially considered a classic, Sam also had to apply to the Ministry of Culture and Heritage to get special permission to temporarily ‘export’ her to the islands, and promise to bring her back!

With most of the restoration complete – although, as every boat owner knows, there is always work to be done – what’s the plan now? “We’re going cruising – or going voyaging. Cruising implies a level of financial certainty,” Sam jokes. So far, they have cruised the west coast of Fiji up to the Yasawas before spending time around the Mamanucas in search of the perfect waves which are dotted around the place.

The couple planned to be away in the islands until around November, then bring the boat back to New Zealand for the summer before heading back to the tropics again next year.

“We plan to have a crack at it every winter for the next few years. We might do Tonga in 2025 and wander through the islands heading west,” Sam says. “We have had to put so much money and time into the boat, we would like to be able to do it again a few more times.

“I couldn’t bring myself to sell her – one day maybe, but I’m so attached to her it would be very hard, and I would be extremely fussy about who she would go to.”

Hopefully that day is still long in the future, and Sam and Jen can enjoy the result of their hard work for many years to come. She might be small, but Nordic is everything they need.