Master of restoration

By ROBIN BAILEY

Haruru Falls in the Bay of Islands is the location of this country's newest marine venture, the New Zealand Maritime Restoration School Trust.

The trust is a non-profit shipwright training institute dedicated to restoring classic vessels while teaching a new generation of tradespeople the skills of traditional craftsmanship.

Heading the project is Jay Lawry, a 40-something sailor with more than 220,000 nautical miles on his log. He is also a museum-trained restoration shipwright with the sort of CV that shows he is well qualified to ensure the school is successful.

He admits it is an ambitious and challenging exercise.

"Our aim is to teach the skills, history, science and art of restoring, maintaining and building classic vessels," he says.

"Doing this will preserve the knowledge, heritage, craftsmanship and aesthetic genius inherent in these yachts."

Lawry grew up in Perth, where he sailed a Cherub, but made his sporting mark as a rower, going on to represent Western Australia. After leaving school he worked for a builder of rowing shells, which he sees as a great introduction to fine boatbuilding.

"You've got this 45ft boat with tiny timbers and eight strapping blokes who heave 280-odd pounds of pressure into every stroke. That's a lot of strain on a little cockleshell."

He moved on to a company building GRP trailer-sailors, joining as general dogsbody and leaving three years later as foreman. During that time he decided his future lay in wood, not fibreglass, so the 21-year-old headed east across the Nullarbor Plain in a jeep towing a little catamaran.

He had some wild times along the way: "Every few hundred miles I'd camp on the beach, launch the cat through the surf and blast along the coast for a couple of hours."

Then followed some blue water adventures that included crewing from Perth to the United States aboard a three-masted Chinese junk. On this voyage he learned navigation from the skipper, a former naval officer.

After that came the Parmelia Race from Fremantle to Plymouth to mark Western Australia's 150th birthday. Lawry crewed on a 52ft ketch and by the time the boat got to Britain he had decided on a change of ship.

"The race organiser tells me there's a French boat looking for crew, so I knock on the deck, the skipper pokes his head out and says, 'Navigateur?' When we left for Fremantle the next day I discover [at age 24] I'm the only person on board who knows anything about navigation ... "

The young sailor settled back in Fremantle, determined to acquire the specialised wooden shipbuilding skills he felt were fast disappearing. He studied "by peering over the shoulders of some of the few remaining wooden boatbuilders". Along the way he paid $400 for an old 24-footer and when he finished restoring it a year later he was offered a job at the West Australian Maritime Museum.

As well as working on restoration, Lawry researched construction and history, an aspect of the job which still intrigues him.

In his mid-30s he left the museum and headed back to the United States to take up a restoration course at the Maine Maritime Museum. Two months before completing it the museum offered him a staff job as an instructor, teaching hot and cold wood-bending, lofting and lines-taking until his visa ran out and he returned home.

"In 1992 my dad died, my mother was very down and when she said, 'Why don't we go cruising?' there was no argument. I bought the 32-foot sloop Mavourneen and we were off."

That was October 1994; Lawry, his 78-year-old mother and "a bloke called Anthony" set off around the world. The circumnavigation took eight years and 65,000 nautical miles, including many adventures and a lot of crew changes.

As the voyage drew to an end, Lawry refined his dream of an Antipodean maritime restoration school. Once ashore he decided the Bay of Islands was an appropriate location given its long maritime history. Now, with a heap of bureaucratic hurdles behind him, pupils have signed on and the first course will start on July 7, running full-time for 23 weeks.

The initial project is restoration of Dauntless, a 1912 Bailey and Lowe 35-footer. By the time the students graduate on December 12 the yacht will be restored and back in the water.

NZ Maritime Restoration School Trust