No one was cheering louder than Whangarei sailmaker David Parr when 107-year-old racing yacht Rawhiti took line honours and was first on handicap in the first race for classic yachts in the 2012 Auckland Anniversary Regatta - even though he was competing in the same race on another vessel.
The illustrious Rawhiti was rigged with sails he and co-sailmaker Tom Barker had completed last year in his Whangarei loft, Calibre Sails Ltd, and it was the vessel's first big racing weekend following completion of a meticulous and costly restoration project.
David Parr was aboard Rainbow, which also has sails made at Calibre Sails, and says it was thrilling to see the famous yacht "win by a country mile". Rainbow came second to Rawhiti and completed a double success for Calibre Sails in the next race by repeating Rawhiti's feat - line honours and first on handicap.
It's rare for the sailmaker to enjoy such notable success here because overseas work is the company's mainstay.
Most product goes overseas indirectly through work done for cruising yachts or directly to Dubai as sails for racing dhows.
The company has made about 18 sails for racing dhows over the past three years, the largest of which are too big to be fully spread out on the floor of the loft.
Dhow racing is big business in Dubai and fiercely competitive involving hundreds of vessels, he says.
One performance report that came back to Parr on the sails made in Whangarei was that they were "scary fast" - but even this wasn't enough for one owner who commissioned wind tunnel experiments at Auckland University last year to see how the traditional design could be modified to make his dhows go faster. Calibre Sails incorporated the findings into his next set of sails.
The company is currently busy making and repairing sails for cruising yachts preparing to leave Northland at the end of the hurricane season.
Working on sails for historic yachts presents a different and fascinating set of challenges, not because of their size but because, as with both Rawhiti and Rainbow, the sails are made up of dozens of narrow panels sewn together - "time-consuming but not overly technically demanding, as modern sails can be".
Rawhiti's mainsail is about 100sq m and the gibs each around 30sq m. He acknowledges such contracts are likely to be a rare pleasure - "demand generally is down about 15 per cent around the world and with classic boats we are in the field of discretionary income."
Blast from pastRawhiti is an 18.89m long (overall) gaff cutter, designed and built by Logan Brothers in Auckland and launched in Auckland in October 1905. She was the last of the "big four" flush-deck Logan racing yachts launched in Auckland from 1898-1905, and said to be the finest. The quality of the vessel and her extensive transtasman history have seen her described as the most important racing yacht historically in Australasia. Rawhiti was raced hard from the outset and was the undisputed champion of Sydney Harbour and fastest yacht in Australia for about 30 years following her launch, and she was the flagship Australian racing yacht used for ceremonial occasions. The Rawhiti Cup is still sailed for in Sydney to this day. The Marler family of New Zealand bought Rawhiti in 1946 on condition she was never raced in Australia again (to maintain her unbeaten record) and returned to Auckland. She has remained there ever since, winning many more races and cruising the Hauraki Gulf and beyond. She has had a string of high-profile owners, including commodores of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Club.
She was extensively modernised around 1970 by the removal of her original rudder, deck furniture, deck, interior and most of her deck gear, and the addition of wheel steering, an engine, a new cabin top, new interior, and Bermudan rig with alloy spars. The current owners bought the vessel in 2003. Rawhiti was still in the water but far from being what she was in her heyday. Restoration began in 2005.
David Parr describes the sails made in Whangarei as a mix of classic and contemporary, designed using 3D computer modelling, drawing on what the company had learned making the sails for Rainbow. The material was cream-finished dacron but all the detailing corner patching was done in the traditional tan-coloured leather. The dacron was imported from Holland: the leather was sourced in New Zealand. Cotton sales used to be made up of panels sewn together because this was the width produced by the looms of the time - unnecessary with dacron but used for both Rawhiti and Rainbow to preserve a traditional look.
David Parr trained as a sailmaker in Auckland and spent over 20 years overseas involved in the America's Cup campaigns and Whitbread Around The World races, before setting up Calibre Sales in 2005.