NZ-built yacht at centre of cocaine bust up for auction
Six months after it was at the centre of a massive $300 million cocaine bust, a luxury yacht decked out in New Plymouth is going up for auction.
The 37-metre Kahu, which has six bedrooms, accommodation for four crew and a 12,000-kilometre range, will be sold between April 27 and 28 in an online sale with no reserve – although bidders will need to lodge a $1900 deposit.
The Kahu was originally a New Zealand Navy patrol ship and in 2011 Fitzroy Yachts transformed it into a luxury yacht for owner Peter White-Robinson to travel the world with his family.
They set off in August 2012 but within a year the yacht-building company that White-Robinson had founded in 1998 on the back of Fitzroy Engineering, which he owned 1991-2010, had fallen into financial difficulties.
In May 2013, after arriving in Canada, White-Robinson ceased being a director of Fitzroy Yachts and that same month announced the voyage was over. The Kahu was sold.
Last September, the Australian Federal Police and Britain’s National Crime Agency intercepted the charter yacht in international waters, on its way from the Caribbean to Britain with more than 2 tonnes of cocaine on board. Six people – five Nicaraguan nationals and one British citizen, aged from 24 to 49 – were arrested.
At the time of the bust, White-Robinson joked in an interview with the Sunday World that his family and friends had sent him messages asking what he had been up to.
The Kahu is now moored in Torquay, England, where potential buyers can view it on April 20. T
he reported that at current fuel prices it would cost about NZ$101,326 to fuel up its tanks.
While it carries no reserve, the yacht had a €1.5 million (about NZ$2.5m) price tag when it was listed for sale on superyacht sites a few months before the bust.
Fitzroy Yachts was bought by a businessman operating from a company registered in the tax haven of Vanuatu but closed in 2014, with the loss of 120 jobs, after it could not secure a major contract to stay operational.
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