Trying to design my own cat.

It doesn't give me an option to give points....just "add to reputation"...so I guess that adds a point. No option for giving negative points.
Can't be bothered anyway....too lazy. I'll have to send money instead...(yeah right)

 

Perry
here's the pics of your old home. I thought I would post them here cos I wanted to post a pic of my brother too...and who knows...maybe some people might be interested in Wellington.

I will delete the Dixon St photos later cos I shouldn't really use this forum. The pic of my brother will stay though. Please let me know when you have got the pics.

PS. The person who used my identity in other posts was not my brother. As you can see by the pic, he is far too mature for that kind of crap.

 

Richard, put something in your deposit box (post 361) - also look at your "user CP" at the bottom of the page... Is that your "twin brother"? My Lovely Lady always reckons my "twin brother " is doing the wrong thing - etc. etc.... Ghosts are difficult to photograph... so are masalai's...

 

136, Dixon Street

Richard,

Thank you so much for the photographs. They brought my memories flooding back. The photo down Dixon Street from the steps is almost identical to one my father took when there was a fire (early 50s) in Willis Street. Macdonald Crescent is the hill my younger brother hurtled down in our light blue pedal car, with his feet on the bar above the pedals. I pushed him off a little too fast and he did not make the bend. Just a few scratches, but he remembers all right.

The entrance to the steps was curved brick and the MC footpath ended in a dropped kerb, the road leading into the carpark of the flats. The cream weatherboarding and green windows are as I remember them. The view up at the side of 136 from the carpark shows the brick of the steps and one set of original windows with the leaded panes, and, of course, the steps on the side of the building, where my shins paid their dues.

It's also incredible that a motorway has been driven through the hill. Dixon Street continued up from MC as zigzag steps up to Percival Street, but they looked dark and forbidding to a six year old and I didn't venture much higher until I was eight. 136 must be over eighty years old now and the front garden and skeletal veranda show it.

I went to school at Marist Newtown, which is long gone, I would think. The tram ran along Willis Street and I'd get off at Abel Smith Street. I'd not long been in NZ when I walked out from the rear of the tram across the road and was knocked down by a car travelling towards central Wellington. The driver took me to hospital where I had ten stitches. Three above my left eye and seven in the back of my head. My mother was contacted and came to take me home by tram. I was off school for only two days!

I'm looking at the Google map as I type. I'm puzzled by Karo Drive which is also marked as the Urban Motorway 1 and seems to run across the junction of Willis Street and Abel Smith Street, right through the house of Patrick Ryan, who must have lived at 280. We met at school and he taught me to swim. Is Karo Drive underground? The map is indistinct.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand&sa=X&oi=map&ct=image

278 Willis Street was a large house and was empty around those times and we kids thought it was haunted. There were electric bells in some of the rooms for summoning servants and a revolving summer house in the overgrown back garden. Here is an odd tale. Paddy, his younger brother Kevin and I were playing in the back garden. We found what today I am still sure of, were human remains. I picked up the skull and was fearfully carrying it back towards the house, when Paddy shouted that it was following me. I dropped the skull, we all scarpered out of the house and never went back, nor did well tell anyone as we weren't supposed to be in there.

I sometimes wonder if it was my imagination, but it still is chillingly real even as I type. Had we stumbled upon a murder victim? Is there a report in a newspaper from the early 50s detailing what happened in that house?

Perry

 

Masalai,
my brother Andrew is 2 years younger than me. We look nothing alike

Perry,
Glad you like the photos. The map link didn't download properly on this pile of junk computer. I will get back to you later when I have the time. There is a major new motorway overpass in the area you described.
Human skull?? Your memory is good with the description of the house and gateway and everything. Maybe the skull is not just in your imagination. I will leave the crime scene investigation up to you

You may be interested to know that 136 Dixon St is full of students now....as is the whole area on that corner. There were so many students coming and going in and out of that house, and the neighbouring houses, that it was inevitable that a couple became angry at me taking the photos. So I asked their permission and they all moved out of the way so I could take some shots without them in the pic.
All around the older parts of Wellington there are old houses that have been recorded on a demolition waiting list. The better looking ones are restored, while the less valuable ones are rented out to students, and are often barely maintained at all (cheap rent). The thing is....the demolition never seems to happen. There is some controversy about this because many of them are considered an earthquake risk.

 

Richard,

I remember feeling my bed swaying and moving during earth tremours, but there wasn't any damage. Fire was always the concern.

Looking at the Zoomin map http://www.zoomin.co.nz/map/nz/wellington/ I realise that the foundations or the overpass must have gone straight through the houses that were on the corner of Willis Street and Abel Smith Street that were shown on shown on the Google satellite map.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand&sa=X&oi=map&ct=image

Xmas holidays were spent up the Wanganui River Road on a farm owned at the time by the Monks. I have rediscovered it on the Google map at Ranana. The track from the River Road leads down to the north bank of the Wanganui, directly opposite the farm buildings high on the soputhern bank. Theey are the only buildings there. The ranch sits with the Wanganui National Park to its east as the Riripo Road meanders across the heights and south into the bush. We went there because my father wished to shoot 4 mature wild boar and have the tusks mounted in silver as a toast rack.

Click on green symbol A.

http://www.google.co.uk/maps?q=map ...n, New Zealand&saddr=Ranana, New Zealand&rl=1

I just clicked on the distance from Wellington to Ranana 253 Km and it's still an expedition of 5 hours 42 minutes. Hell's teeth!

The fourth lower jaw escaped him, because Glaxo Laboratories recalled him and us back home. The Victoria University Marine Research Laboratory on the Esplanade at Island Bay, was originally built as a factory for processing sharks' livers to extract Vitamin A. Europe was suffering poor nutrition and famine in some parts, so Glaxo decided to do something about this tragedy.

Being originally an NZ company, a baby food manufacturer processing local milk into an early baby foods by the names of Ostermilk and Farex, which were sold in the 1930s under the slogan "Glaxo builds bonny babies", Glaxo chose NZ for its venture. It took five years for the stainless steel process vessels to be manufactured and shipped out, because of all the shortages after WW2, but finally all was complete.

Fishing vessels were commissioned to catch sharks only for their livers, which were stored in alumnium milk churns on their decks without refrigeration. After these churns were dropped off at various railheads, NZ Railways freighted them to Island Bay where their rotting contents were exposed and placed in the holding vats. The oily fish stench from the factory could be detected from Happy Valley Road when the wind blew in the "wrong" direction.

The seas were about to be swept clean of sharks when the call came in May 1953 from Glaxo in Greenford, UK that Vitamin A could be synthesised and the factory should be closed down. We crossed to Sydney and shipped home on the P & O Strathaird. http://www.ssmaritime.com/strathaird2.htm

Still visible on the main street of Bunnythorpe is a derelict dairy factory (factory for drying and processing cows' milk into powder) with the original Glaxo logo clearly visible.

Finding the ranch, I can trace the tracks used by the hunters and pigs dogs as they set off for a couple of days. They would "cooee" down from the east ridge (Riripo Road) before descending the escarpment track and walking in from the SW past the line of windbreak poplars.

Dawn Monk usually rowed across the fast flowing Wanganui to collect us when we arrived and parked up at the end on the track on the North bank. There appear to be white cars on the satellite map and the track continues under the trees to the pickup point just upstream from the rapids. It was always a long haul upstream to make the crossing in both directions. A rifle shot would summon her to the high ridge on the South bank and she'd hurtle down the rough track and launch the rowboat.

Packed away safely are hundreds of my father's B&W photographs, but some were stored in a small writing bureau stolen 12 years ago. Some were of the Wakapai when she stranded at Ranana rapids.

http://riverboats.homestead.com/Wakapai.html

Finally, for good or worse here are a couple of photos of me, one at Brighton Marina and the other? Probably in my cups.

 

And people say New Zealand has no history! After reading all that...Wellington feels very old to me now.

Thanks for the self portraits
The first one looks like you are grumpy cos the sky has been grey for too long.
At first glance, the second one looks like you have been rescued from sea and are on a drip
I'm sure London can't be all that bad.

Cheers Perry

 

Hot Dammmmm Perry...

Excellent memory! All of that from a picture?

J

 

WTF

More memories? Geeezzzz...if this don't beat a stroll down memory lane!!

Glad to hear you still got the marbles rolling.

J

 

To two go too!

Here is a lovely catamaran designed by Chris Ostlind and very nice it is.

http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/08/designs/gato/index.htm

Regards,

Perry

 

Hi Perry, didn't see you there. Haven't been on the net much lately.

That little cat is kind of like a very fast, unstable monohull. For me personally, if I was going for that size range, I would choose a monohull for the better cabin space and that quaint charm that only a small monohull has....or I would go the other way and go for a blast on a Hobie without the closed in cabin feeling.
I'm sure there are a lot of people who would like a bit of both, so for them, I think it's a very nice design. Speed doesn't really turn me on that much.

Cheers

 

Hello Perry...hope you are well.

That is very nice indeed. Well thought out, especially with the hardware. I like the different width options too.

J

 

After learning more about Los Angeles, I have come to the conclusion that my original design will have too many problems due to its size and weight. Beach regulations, storage problems, property prices and other factors have led me to design a much more practical boat for my lifestyle.

Here it is....but incomplete. I'll provide more details in future. It's only 10 ft wide and does not need to be demounted for trailing in California, as long as I have a wide load permit (easy to obtain).

The mast is easy to raise by one person. The boat takes 6 adults max. When they are seated on the tramps/mattresses, with 60 kg camping gear stored just forward of the cabins, the boat is perfectly balanced. Even so, the crew will need to understand that this is no cruise-liner.

The cabin tops are well below shoulder height for the helmsman's view, and are the same height as a kitchen bench for someone standing in a cockpit. The boat can be helmed from many different positions, depending on weather conditions and number of people onboard.

Won't be fast with a full payload, but still a lot of fun and EASY to rig, launch, beach, trail and store.

Most important of all, it still feels like a hippy boat.

 

Only three meters wide

I suggest you go for a cruise on someone else's before you build this semi canoe Seems to me by the time you get to the US everything would have shrunk in size

I can just see you end up with a hobi 16

 

Richard i run Cubase Sx with my son Gr 8 piano and and and

your boat designs ARE HIPPY he he he

maybe dangerooooos