It looked like a big hunk of steel. But the 25-30-tonne slice of ship moving around Tenix's Whangarei shipyard marked a significant day in the city's proud shipbuilding history as the keel for the first of four new navy ships.
Tenix, which won part of the Government's $500 million Project Protector,
has laid the first keel for a new naval inshore patrol vessel (IPV) at its Whangarei shipyard.
In the keel-laying ceremony recently, Ministry of Defence project director Gary Collier placed a coin into a special cavity carved into the wooden dock block.
The keel-laying ceremony, which dates back hundreds of years, involves inserting a talisman into the keel at the start of the build to protect ship builders and future seafarers from bad luck. At Tenix the talisman is a special edition New Zealand silver five-dollar coin. The coin will be retrieved at launch and presented to the ship's company at a later date.
Mr Collier said the keel lay of the first IPV was an important milestone, not just for the Whangarei site but also for the whole project.
"It is good to see real progress being made on all Project Protector vessel types ... They are now off the drawing board and well into the construction phase," he said.
Tenix is building four IPVs and some modules for two offshore patrol vessels (OPV) as part of Project Protector for the Royal New Zealand Navy.
Navy public relations manager Lieutenant Commander Barbara Cassin said the first IPV should be launched in January, with the final one ready by the end of next year.
The keel for the second IPV will be laid in July while in May the first of the OPV modules built in Whangarei will be ready to be barged to Melbourne for completion. The work is expected to inject up to $110 million into the Northland economy over three years. The IPVs will conduct maritime surveillance to about 24 nautical miles off shore.
