Three times happy
Here’s a story of a boat and a bloke that couldn’t be kept apart. Even after two trial separations. Now, their third union looks like it’s forever. It’s going to be Happy Days – permanently – from here on, for owner Peter Davies.
A bloke and his boat can’t be kept apart. Even after two trial separations – the third one cemented the relationship.
It’s a story too, not of a boat alone, but of dedicated efforts by visionaries and craftsmen, to preserve a precious piece of New Zealand’s boating heritage. And, after a family’s 84-year on-and-off relationship with a lovely boat, it has a happy ending, too. What’s not to like? If all this sounds confusing, perhaps it’s best to go back to the beginning.
Happy Days is a venerable, vintage inboard-powered motorboat. Built in 1933 in Picton, she’s a John L. Hacker design, of the famous Hacker Craft company. These boats are American icons. The kind of gleaming, varnished, mahogany speedboats we associate with movies about the Roaring Twenties (before the Crash), and the days of rum-running during Prohibition.
A fleet of them was used in the memorable 1975 movie Lucky Lady. They also featured in the Venice boat chase scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Famous Hacker Craft have evocative names like Pardon Me, Thunderbird, El Lagarto, Bootlegger, Peerless, Dolphin, Kitty Hawk, Belle Isle Bear Cats, My Sweetie. And Kitty Hawk II, the fastest boat in the world in 1912.
Hacker Craft, the company, is based in upstate New York and has been in continuous production of mahogany powerboats since 1906 – with a diversion during Wwll into Army Air Force rescue boats. The boats are listed as ‘among America’s top 50 products’. Up there, I imagine, with Harleys and Boeings. They have simple lines that speak volumes. They are redolent of an age, not faded by faulty nostalgia, but illuminated by the allure of timeless craftsmanship, manifest in layers of glistening varnish. It’s all about dedication and love; repeated love, and enduring appeal.
Now, a Hacker is a collector’s item. They are still built at the original yard, after 115 years. A special feature of each boat is the famous Hacker logo on the mahogany topsides, in gold plate. I learn that “Designed by Hacker in 1916, the logo is applied by hand over a sized pattern with extremely thin 23-carat gold leaf sheets, tapped onto the boat’s mahogany planking then burled and outlined in paint. This process known as Gold Gilding, is still used on today’s Hacker Boats.”
There’s no such gold embellishment to Happy Days. It’s hardly needed. She’s special in other ways.
Happy Days was built by Swedish brothers Vic and Clarrie Olsen. Vic did the woodworking – Clarrie took care of all things mechanical. The Olsens built boats for the famous powerboat races for the Masport Cup, including the legendary Pelorus Jack.
This one is the 24-foot runabout design, with Hacker Craft’s trademark central engine separating a front cockpit from a rear ‘dicky seat’. Happy Days has a carvel-planked hull of kauri, with decks of western red cedar.
Initially powered by a marinised Austin 4 engine, she was built for a Blenheim dentist – a Dr Stocker. Davies’ dad Tom