Utiekah II
By Malcolm Lambe
The 114 year old UTIEKAH II was at the Royal Motor Yacht Club’s Timber Boat Festival on Pittwater last weekend looking very shipshape. Last month saw her on Sydney Harbour for the Maritime Museum and Sydney Amateur Sailing Club’s regatta for 100+ year old vessels.
UTIEKAH II was designed and built by Lyons & Savage in Williamstown, Victoria in 1911. She was commissioned by a school master at Melbourne Grammar School for use in “character building”. Giles, the school master, would take the victims…I mean boys…out into the sometimes treacherous waters of Bass Strait. I guess it was a matter of “shape up or ship out”.
She is 12.69M long with a beam 3.51M, carvel-planked in New Zealand Kauri and was originally rigged as a gaff yawl fitted with a centreboard.
Giles sold UTIEKAH II in 1924 to well-known ex-kiwi yachtsman Harold Nossiter in Sydney where she had successful racing seasons winning many trophies including The Royal Prince Alfred’s Rawhiti Cup, The Sayonara Cup and The Lipton Cup.
In 1927 Nossiter converted UTIEKAH II to Bermudan rig – one of the first Aussie boats to do so. The humungous 70-odd foot long spruce mast was fashioned out of Norwegian Spruce by a 16 year old Carl Halvorsen using adze and hand plane.
UTIEKAH II at moorings, NSW south coast with a man up the 70ft mast!
Under this rig UTIEKAH II won The Morna Cup, The Boomerang Cup and The Fairfax Cup.
Interestingly when Nossiter raced the boat they stripped all excess weight from her – the head, the bunks and even the engine. They raced her so hard the seams would open up and they’d have to man the pumps. At the end of the racing season everything was put back for the family to cruise the NSW coast.
Nossiter sold UTIEKAH II when he had SIRIUS built to sail around the world with his sons in the early 1940s.
The famous “I love a sunburnt country” poet Dorothea Mackellar is said to have then bought the boat and no doubt moored it in Lovett Bay where her house still stands on the Northern Shore.
The next owner was the famous aviator Sir Gordon Taylor. He lived in a waterfrontage opposite Loquat Valley School and housed his Catalina seaplane there. (His family at one time owned Scotland Island). Taylor sailed the boat solo to Port Stephens and had a hell of a time both on the way up and the way back. Coming back to Pittwater he had a crewman but they were smashed by foul weather off Port Stephens and had to be rescued. Taylor suffered from a very bad case of sea sickness after climbing the mast to free a halyard.
Well-known shipwright, marine surveyor and yachtsman Peter Kershaw has owned Utiekah II for many years. He and his nephew Ian Begg restored her from 1980 to her 100th birthday in 2011. There has been ongoing maintenance to keep her shipshape since. Unfortunately Peter has some health issues so the vessel is currently for sale.
