A historic 100 year old trawler that spent two months underwater at Fisherman’s Wharf was refloated on Friday.
The 16 metre Kaikohe sank during flooding that hit many parts of the region in February. After two failed attempts by the Nelson Fire Service to bring it up, a heavy duty, 10,000 litre-per-minute vacuum pump from Christchurch got the job done.
Ross MacRae, who is helping to renovate the boat, says it took about 45 minutes of actual pumping to get it floating again.
Ross says that the boat also sank last year, and amazingly the time it has spent underwater has had “very little effect” on it.
In fact, he says it was probably good for it, with to the seawater “pickling” the hard wood.
“There’s nothing wrong with the hull – now it’s up, it will stay up,” he says.
Burt Fox from Lift and Shift says it was a “pretty simple job,” and they even managed to attract a crowd.
“We had a few people watching, it was pretty hard-case. As we kept going, more and more people stopped to watch,” he says.
Ross says the boat was definitely worth refloating, and just before it sank he was getting ready to repair it, which included replacing the deck with native New Zealand Totara.
“It has so much heritage value and could be a real community asset,” he says.
