Hayden Potaka is the owner of Unique Whanganui Experience, and has bought the Adventurer II riverboat.
Hayden Potaka is the owner of Unique Whanganui Experience, and has bought the Adventurer II riverboat.
The Adventurer II riverboat has been sold for use in a new venture - and a former co-owner who put the company into liquidation thinks he will get "bugger all" from the sale.
Aground on the mud at low tide, the boat was bought yesterday by Hayden Potaka, who plansto repair it and use it as a base to provide tourists with "high end Māori-infused kai".
The Adventurer was built by Robert "Baldy" Baldwin and others, and owned by Baldwin, Joseph Ebben and Terrence "Bob" Harris under the Baldwin Adventure Tours company.
Since 2009 Harris has contributed more than $200,000 and his labour, with the aim of "putting Whanganui on the map" with a tourist operation.
But he trusted Baldwin and didn't do due diligence on the company.
"In the end we just became completely dysfunctional directors," he said.
He put the company into liquidation on October 30 last year. The liquidator was the Official Assignee in Hamilton, charged with selling up assets and paying any debt.
The asset was the boat, which was left moored at the Settlers Wharf in central Whanganui.
The assignee estimated it was worth $300,000 - but since then it has been vandalised, and Harris reckons it lost about $250,000 in value.
He had wanted a public meeting about the matter, to inform Whanganui ratepayers, who he said put $10,000 into the venture.
The boat was sold through Turners Auctions.
Potaka wouldn't say how much he paid, just that the price was okay.
Harris will be surprised if it fetched $50,000.
Former part-owner Bob Harris says the Adventurer II has lost value by being unsecured since October. Photo / Bevan Conley
Potaka works for Manawatū economic development agency CEDA, as a business adviser.
He owns Unique Whanganui Experience, which has provided weekend tourists with food cooked by celebrity chefs at Puraroto Camp Ground, 5km upriver from Pipiriki, for the past two seasons.
He plans to get the Adventurer II hauled ashore during the next month, and to take it to Whanganui's port to be surveyed and repaired.
The work may be expensive and need volunteers, he said. He wants to change the boat's facade and colour scheme and use it to provide a "missing piece" to Whanganui tourism - the Māori perspective.
The revamped Adventurer II could be moored, with groups of 10 to 15 getting on board for a dinner. Or it could move from place to place, with the food based on what was available there.
Potaka's brother is a chef, and he's a food enthusiast.
"I have always thought about having Māori food on the Whanganui River, but also having the Māori story in behind it."
The Adventurer II has made two trips to Taumarunui, and in the winter when the river is high that could be repeated - but not commercially.
"I'm hoping that our people on the river will be able to partake in that as well. Even though we come down on canoes and jetboats, a slower, more intimate journey on a paddleboat would be great," Potaka said.
