An historic Tauranga manual slipway winch has been preserved for posterity through the joint efforts of members of the Tauranga Yacht and Powerboat Club and the Tauranga Historical Society.

After being placed in the care of the Society by the TYPBC the winch mysteriously disappeared last year. The scarce example of maritime machinery has since been recovered and is now lawfully lodged in the Tauranga City Council Heritage Collection. Perhaps one day it will be on display in a Tauranga museum.

For nearly 70 years the winch served a small TYPBC slipway at the south end of The Strand, by the railway bridge. The winch was installed by the Club on the concrete slip circa 1950 to bring its patrol boats and sailing craft ashore. Club life member Jimmy Gilpin, who played on the foreshore from 1948 before going on to win the P-class Tauranga and Tanner Cups for three years in succession, recently recalled its arrival: “Jack Allen donated a manual winch, and we put in a slipway and used the trolley to launch our boats.”

During the 1960s the most regular user of the slip was the clubhouse custodian, Tim Morrell, who used it to put his beloved 20ft mullet boat Lorna on the hard for maintenance and her annual scrubbing and repainting. It became known as “Tim’s private slip.”

In the early 1970s the Club built a corrugated-iron boatshed alongside the slipway for the storage and upkeep of its patrol craft, and it was an article in the February 2017 issue of Waterline headed “Bob’s boatshed days may be numbered” which drew the Historical Society’s attention to the adjacent winch. Apparently, after the Club’s use of the shed lapsed, it had been taken over by Bob Murray, and after 30 years of his tenancy the local authorities were attempting to evict him. Historical Society members researched the history of that part of the foreshore, noted that the old manual winch was the only remaining example of many once in use on the Tauranga harbour, and resolved to preserve it.

Bob Murray died on August 30, 2018. TYPBC Commodore Andrew Knowles formally authorised the Tauranga Historical Society to uplift the winch and transfer it to the Tauranga Heritage Collection.

In mid-September 2019, whilst arrangements for securing the winch were in hand, the said historic artifact disappeared, wrenched from its 70-years-old foundations by heavy-lift gear and persons unknown.

The Historical Society launched an investigation and on February 3 2020 the Society was advised by local government officials that the winch had been located, and asked to whom the Society would like it delivered. And so, a wayward winch, a reminder of the days when the only sound of a boat being hauled ashore was the clinking of the pawl over the cogs (and perhaps the grunting of the sailor straining at the handle) is now formally safeguarded.