KEY POINTS:
Sinking of the former Navy frigate HMNZS Canterbury as a dive attraction in the Bay of Islands on Saturday has been postponed because of forecast poor weather and sea conditions.
"We really had no option," Bay of Islands Canterbury Charitable Trust spokesman Richard Witehira said after a trust meeting yesterday.
The vessel was to have been towed from its berth at Opua wharf this morning to its scuttling location at Deep Water Cove just inside Cape Brett at the southern entrance to the Bay of Islands. Final preparations were then to have been made for its sinking by explosive charges on Saturday afternoon.
The 3000-tonne ship will now be scuttled on either October 26 or the following Saturday, November 3, weather conditions permitting.
Mr Witehira said forecast wind and sea conditions this Saturday gave rise to safety considerations involving not just the Canterbury but the safety of spectator boats and people on the water.
The trust did not want to take any risks, he said.
Meanwhile, Kerikeri High School student Lucy Hamnett wasn't born when the warship she will sink was commissioned.
Fourteen-year-old Lucy has the simple job of pushing the button to detonate the explosive charges which will send the Canterbury to the seabed.
Her parents, Keith and Sue, won a bid for the button-pressing honour during a recent auction organised by the trust behind the project. The Hamnetts bid $19,200 for the privilege after emigrating to the Bay of Islands from Halifax in Yorkshire barely a fortnight before the auction at Haruru Falls where Mr Hamnett now has a storage business.
Mrs Hamnett says the move is permanent. "We'd been coming and going for a couple of years and we decided this is where we want to live."
She says their daughter won't be on her own when she comes to trigger the big blasts - "we'll be there on the [firing] boat to give her support".
The 113 metre long Canterbury has been berthed at Opua since February while a wrecking crew stripped the vessel in preparation for sinking. It had been towed north by tug after spending time in dry dock at Devonport Naval Base while marine pest sea squirt was cleaned from the hull to meet biosecurity requirements and consent conditions for its new seabed home.
The trust has had to raise more than $700,000 to complete the project. Much of this has come from the sale of equipment, parts and scrap metal from the ship.
Northland regional harbourmaster Ian Niblock must sign off two conditions of consent before any countdown to detonation starts.
He says the vessel's hull must be clean and the ship must be positioned in the correct location, and aligned in the right way.
"There's a notional footprint in place so the vessel must sink in exactly the right spot."
Mr Niblock's final approvals will allow the countdown to start in Deep Water Cove on whatever day the vessel is sunk.
The Canterbury will be added to a chain of vessels scuttled off Northland's east coast in recent years as increasingly popular dive attractions. These include the former Navy ships Waikato and Tui, sunk offshore from Tutukaka and former Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior sunk near the Cavalli Islands, offshore from Matauri Bay.
