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OLD MLS NEVER DIE BY HEATHER REEVE Work in progress … It never ends K eith and I have had the honour of being the proud owners of the Paea, New Zealand's only original harbour defence motor launch, since December 2008. We brought her up to Auckland from Picton and have spent the last four years using her at every opportunity – summer and winter, cruising the Hauraki Gulf. However, the time had come for us to address repainting the hull and renewing her antifouling. We had joined the Te Atatu Boat Club in Auckland a few years before with the intention of doing the makeover there as they had earlier hauled out another motor launch, the Tamure. But they declined to haul us out, despite letters of support from Professional Skipper magazine the Royal New Zealand Navy and others. The hiccup worked in our favour and led to a chance meeting at the Auckland International Boat Show in November 2011 with Jo and Murray Wilkinson, who told us about their yard, Norsand Boatyard in Whangarei, and a couple of phone calls later we were booked in for our haulout. We arrived after a lovely two-day trip up the east coast just a couple of days before Christmas 2011, and what a breeze the haulout was. Norsand was professional and had excellent staff. When we looked at the task of removing the "ecosystem" on the bottom of the Paea we were glad it wasn't us who had to do all the hard work with shovels. Once the boys had removed the growth and given her a waterblasting we had the first real opportunity to see the work that lay ahead of us. We had allowed ourselves all of January to work on the hull, although at that point we didn't realise just how much there was to do. The first task to be addressed were the propellers and the cutlass bearings. The boat had had quite a good shake-up when she was underway so we knew there were issues there. The propellers and cutlass bearings were removed with the much-appreciated help of the boats' first owner from the Navy. A trip to Auckland got the props repaired as one propeller was quite worn down and both were out of balance. 32 Professional Skipper May/June 2012 Once we started to sand the boat we realised some rotten planks on the port side by the bow needed replacing. It was at this point that we met Daniel Kelly, one of the boatbuilders at Norsand, who took off the old Oregon planking and replaced it with new Oregon timber. We soon realised we had a really good boatbuilder, as Daniel did a great job replacing the planks, so much so that we continued to replace other planking that had been badly damaged by over-use of a grinder and which no amount of fairing was going to make look good, so more planks were replaced on both the port and starboard sides. Keith and I wrote our names underneath the planking on the port side and so are now engrained on our girl forever. We had the pleasure of the company of two HMNZS Ngapona old salts, Jerry Payne and Peter Goodwin, who helped by scraping off calico from under the planks and cutting out old bolts when we were replacing the starboard-side planking. We got them to put their names underneath the planking, too! The Paea had been sitting at Picton Wharf for a number of years, providing a home to a former owner. While she was there, the beltings had become damaged on the port side and were another important repair. Once the old outer belting was removed it revealed rot in the wood underneath that needed replacing. It was a real experience witnessing Daniel's workmanship, watching the huge piece of purple heart timber sit with weights on over the weekend to form the necessary bend. We also watched him fit the new wood with wooden plugs, hand-made to cover all the bolts and screws, something he had also done with the Oregon planking. As it turned out, Daniel had worked on the boat with the second owners, who had kept the boat in Northland, and he was really pleased to have the chance to again work on a piece of New Zealand's naval history. Others on the hardstand couldn't believe the speed we were managing to get through the work. Keith and I became adept