A boatbuilding business started in Pandora just six years ago has won New Zealand's top boat show award, the second time in a row that the award has come to Napier.
Dickey Boats was named Overall Winner at the Hutchwilco New Zealand Boat Show in Auckland on Saturday.
The company'sDickey Custom 750 XS, up against New Zealand's best boat builders and other leading models from around the world, had already won the Aluminium Fishing Boat Open award, the largest and most fiercely-contested of nine award categories.
Other category winners, from as far afield as France, included last year's overall winner and another Napier boat builder Profile Boats.
Winning company owner Jason and Tristin Dickey scheduled sea trials for a client in Auckland today before returning to Napier where they run the growing boatbuilding business in Mersey St.
Success at the show is nothing new, their first having come in 2007 when the prototype Dickey Semifly 28 they produced in starting the business also claimed the aluminium boat open category.
Now running a business of about eight staff, with further site expansion planned, they have since built more than 30 luxurious aluminium craft on their range of the winning custom trailer class boat and the bigger Semifly.
A former Taradale High School pupil who was always around boats, Mr Dickey spent 10 years working on super yachts overseas, but doesn't see the multi-million dollar boats becoming part of the range in Napier.
