Zelante is artistry on the water

Zelante has been made fully enclosed with an internal staircase and features a self-supporting helm station, a gull-wing style cocktail cabinet and a space age kitchen. Photo / Supplied

In his latest editorial, Pacific Motoryacht editor Barry Thompson asks: "Where have all the boatyards gone?"

He remembers the days when there were dozens of custom or semi-custom boatbuilders creating timber or GRP launches in the industrial areas around the fringes of the city.

"I remember going into one yard in Silverdale where the owner had six Pelin designs of various lengths and stages of finish on the go in one shed," he writes.

In the 1980s when, as a staff writer on the now defunct Nautical News, I was a regular at those yards, I could visit one small cluster of streets in Glenfield and see Roger Land making Young 88s by the score, Ian Waters churning out multi-stern-driven Vindex sports cruisers and Don Senior creating finely crafted flybridge launches to his own design. In other parts of town, Henderson or East Tamaki for example, it was just as busy.

None of those companies now exists and nor do a myriad like them. McDell Marine (voluntarily closing their doors) and Salthouse Marine (in receivership) are two of the latest to go.

Formula Cruisers in Hobsonville and Salthouse Boatbuilders in their wonderful site on the banks of the upper Waitemata Harbour in Greenhithe, are, as far as I can tell, the only two that remain from that prolific era.

The vast majority of boatyards now fall into two categories: those manufacturing power trailer boats in either GRP or aluminium and those building superyachts - usually but by no means always, sailboats - for the world's seriously wealthy.

The once-iconic Kiwi-built custom launch has all but disappeared; replaced instead by the mass produced offerings of Australian behemoths like Riviera and Maritimo and, more lately, by yards in China and Taiwan.

However, for those with a patriotic bent and a love of Kiwi craftsmanship, there is some good news: a few local custom and semi-custom yards still exist. Formula Cruisers has always offered a fair degree of individual choice with their GRP cruisers and East Tamaki-based Lloyd Stevenson regularly releases delightfully crafted Bill Upfold designs.

And now there is news that a new Don Senior 18-metre flybridge has been created. Back in those halcyon days of the late 1980s and early 1990s Don Senior designs were among the country's most popular.

A versatile designer and boatbuilder who drew and built both yachts and launches, he largely gravitated to the latter.

From a journalist's point of view, a new Don Senior built launch was an occasion to really look forward to. There were several reasons for this, not the least being that the boat would be ready on time. Trying to plan a boat test in those days was a nightmare. Boats scheduled to go in the water on such-and-such a date would be late - never the fault of the boatbuilder, of course; the windscreen wouldn't have arrived or be the wrong size or the engines were delayed on the wharves.

For an editor with deadlines looming it was a regular and unpleasant fact of life.

A Don Senior boat, however, was the exception. Ask Senior when we could go for a ride and he would say: "Boat goes in on Friday, give us the weekend to do the sea trials and we'll go out on Monday." And, weather permitting, we would.

What's more, the boat was always immaculately presented and everything was finished and ready to go. The boat performed as promised and Senior was an excellent host.

Senior did not build his latest offering, Zelante; indeed he has not built a boat for over a decade. It is, though, a boat which, I am sure, he would have been proud to build. The craftsmanship is of the same high standard and there are lovely little touches throughout: the wing-tip cocktail cabinet just one example.

Zelante (Italian for "full of enthusiasm") is the work of owner John Cox and builder Mike Johnston. Originally a 16.4m design, it was reworked, at Cox's request, to 18 metres and made fully enclosed with an internal staircase, something of a rarity on a Senior boat.

Zelante took some eight years to reach fruition. From a commercial point of view this is, of course, ridiculous. However, forget the purely financial angle for a moment and one can appreciate the craftsmanship, the engineering, the thought and the detail that has gone into creating this Kiwi masterpiece. Owner John Cox is an engineer and, quite obviously, a perfectionist. Much of Zelante's hardware was engineered to order at Cox Engineering in Tokoroa; areas that are unlikely to see the light of day more than once or twice a year boast an immaculate finish and the engine room is a showpiece.

The flybridge, the saloon, the master cabin: all are of a standard more usually found on a superyacht.

And that's a fair enough comparison, too. At a cool $4 million (plus GST), Zelante could well be New Zealand's first 18-metre superyacht.

Capable of a top speed, fully laden at around 27 tonnes, of 27.5 knots, she is powered by twin 700hp Caterpillar diesels through conventional drives angled at just 8.5 degrees.

It is a performance that is impressive without being unduly remarkable. For that one has to go on board and experience such delights as the Star Trek-like self-supporting helm station, that gull-wing style cocktail cabinet, the space age kitchen and the superbly engineered central island transom.

One imagines the market for $4 million 18-metre motoryachts is relatively small. But works of art should not be judged with same side of the brain as purely functional objects and Zelante is art. That it can be used for such marvellous pursuits as fishing, diving and cruising is surely the ultimate bonus.

A full review of Zelante appears in the latest issue of Pacific Motoryacht, on sale now, or visit www.pacificmotor yacht.com.

SENIOR 18M SF ZELANTE
* LOA: 18 metres
* Beam: 5.32 metres
* Draft: 1.3 metres
* Displacement: 27 tonnes
* Max speed: 27.5 knots
* Cruise speed: 24 knots
* Construction: Timber/GRP
* Builder: Triton Boats
* Price: $4m + GST

Contact Marine editor Mike Rose on (09) 483-8284; (021) 735-015 or email: mrpr@xtra.co.nz.