NZ boat show back on water after long dry spell

By ROBIN BAILEY

It's back to the future for the nation's premier marine exhibition next year. For more than a decade until 1979, the New Zealand Boat Show staged all sorts of aquatic excitement on the flooded arena at the Auckland Showgrounds. For the 2001 exhibition the water will be back.

The new pool won't be quite as big as the lakes that drew huge crowds to the shows of the 70s, when attendances rivalled those of the Easter Show. In those days that event was the biggest crowd-puller on the nation's outdoor entertainment circuit. For a marine show to attract a similar level of public support showed Auckland's interest in things marine as well as aquatic excitement.

Past show organising committee chairman John Weller recalls the days when V-bottom powerboats and mullet boats raced around the arena and trick ski teams and ski-borne clowns thrilled the crowds.

In 1979, the year before the water went, we even had the replica of Captain Cook's Bounty in the pool. But the cost of water to fill the arena had become prohibitive and our exhibitors wanted a more commercial approach and less public circus.

New chief executive Ian Witters says the 2001 lake will be 90m by 40m. "That's plenty big enough enough for water-skiing, kayaking, thunder cats and model yacht racing and much more. We're putting together an action programme that will recreate all the excitement of the past."

There will be another change for 2001 as well. For the first time the show has a naming sponsor, the marine safety equipment company Hutchwilco, which began making lifejackets in New Zealand in 1894.

Here again there's a link with the past. Hutchwilco managing director Gary Sutton helped to build the first arena lakes in the 70s as an active member of the Auckland Water Ski Club, which has been the sole organiser of the show since 1980.

"I was a member of the trick ski team," Sutton says, "and have vivid memories of some wild moments performing both on and in the water, making the pool watertight and trying to plug the gaps when we sprung one of our regular, and serious, lake leaks.

"I also remember the afternoon my brother Peter drove a throttle-jammed speedboat through the white picket fence and almost into the Arena Bar, which gave some patrons more Boat Show excitement than they'd bargained for."

Hutchwilco today manufactures and distributes a huge range of marine equipment including flares and EPIRBs (emergency locator beacons), water sport equipment and chandlery items and is a successful exporter.

Sutton says he sees his company's role as principal sponsor of the New Zealand Boat Show as an opportunity to demonstrate its long-term commitment to the industry.

"It will also allow us to promote the culture of safer boating through continuing support for co-operative safety initiatives with the Coastguard Boating Education Service, the Maritime Safety Authority, Water Safety New Zealand and WaterSafe Auckland."

The 2001 Hutchwilco New Zealand Boat Show will run from May 31 to June 4 at the Auckland Showgrounds.