Fishing club and restaurant role for old ferry

TAIRUA - A historic ferry has run aground in Tairua Harbour - but it was all planned.

The 87-year-old SS Ngoiro, which spent years as a floating restaurant and museum in Auckland's Viaduct Basin, has found its final berthing place in a sea of sand at Paku Headland.

Since it was towed there from Auckland in March last year, carpenters, electricians and plumbers have worked to prepare it for a key role in the redevelopment of the port.

Part of the ferry's lower deck will become the clubrooms for the Tairua Boating and Game Fishing Club, and the top deck will be a restaurant.

The old engine room, which has not had an engine in it for many years, will be developed as a maritime museum once the restaurant has been leased and more cash can be injected into the project.

Shipwright Harry Hessell has worked on the boat since September, painting, replacing rotten wood and restoring part of the lower deck that was almost destroyed by a fire that started from a welder's spark.

You can still smell the smoke in the room where Pukekohe-based Mr Hessell sleeps when he is working on the ferry.

"To do this, you've got to be boating mad," he said.

"Restoring a ship is a lot different from building a house. When you pull a wall out [on the ferry] you don't know what you're going to find and you have to work out what to do to fix it."

Mr Hessell loves the character of the boat, which plied Auckland Harbour until 1960.

He is not fond of later additions that enclosed more of the top deck and studded it with aluminium joinery.

But bringing the ferry back to original condition is not an option because the Maritime Trust, which owns Ngoiro, does not have the money. The restaurant would also be lost.

Trust chairman Jim Mason said the Ngoiro was bought in 1978 with the intention of bringing it to Tairua. But the then Mayor of Auckland, Sir Dove-Myer Robinson, did not want the piece of maritime history to leave the city.

The Ngoiro was released only when the Viaduct Basin was redeveloped for the America's Cup in 1998.

It does not appear that the maritime character of the boat was lost by putting it on dry land - a group of "burly Hamilton guys" who did some work on the ferry complained they felt seasick.