History – by Martin Northcott, Commodore
The origins of the club began in 1956 operating from an old building located where the present pumphouse is now. It was then moved to a new position roughly where the current Coastguard building is. This in itself was quite a feat as no large machinery was available at the time and it was moved on rollers made from round poles and manually pushed there by a bunch of good keen men. I haven’t been able to talk to anyone who was around at the time but with some more research we will be able to expand on the fledgling club.
The club operated in the moved building until 1960 when a new clubhouse was built and in 1961 the reclamation was constructed where the first ramp is, all done by club volunteer labour. The French Bay Boating Club as it was called then was affiliated and with the inspiration and some more hard work by some very dedicated members the patrol boat was built in a garage up the road and in 1962 Otitori as it was christened was launched.The club membership increased and as more people got on board the enthusiasm increased and in the Annual General Meeting 29 June 1964 a sub committee was formed to organise preparing plans for the new clubhouse which proudly serves the community to this day.
The committee consisted of four members one of whom was Brian Northcott a practising Architect and in October that year a plan and perspective was presented to the members along with an estimate of $14000 .More developed designs were completed and approved by the committee together with an estimate of $15000 and a fund raising project of a monumental scale was launched.
This time in the club was incredibly frantic with all sorts of fund raising schemes—carnivals, sausage sizzles, garden parties and stalls even building P class boats at the Boat Show and carting the completed boat around shopping centres and raffling them off.But the most funds came from bottle drives,which was a superbly organised affair by all the dedicated club members and there are plenty of us around that can recall the sometimes hilarious antics and occurrences on these expeditions, convoys of cars and trailers,open trucks,whatever transport was available with an entourage of youngsters scurrying off into all parts of the local area to hunt out staches of bottles.
On the 31 May 1965 $2000 was allocated to start the project and the Auckland Harbour Board (now the ARC ) was approached for a loan and later that year a modified smaller plan was presented with a new budget of $11000. As one can appreciate, to a proportion of members the cost was everything and there would have been some who would have accepted a building designed by a committee.So the hard working and dedicated members of the day have to take credit for persuing the dream of a building that would stand proud over the sea.The new plans were prepared for a building permit with a design that allowed for further expansion and lodged with WCC with the expectations of having foundations in before Christmas
I am now assuming that the steering committee had the foresight to not nominate which Christmas as WCC stalled the project and more engineering was required so Bob Foster a Structural Engineer and club member was again called on to move things along. Bob was responsible for all the engineering on the new clubhouse and new reclamation on the seaward side of the present club and this was no mean feat even for today, I will not reiterate on the countless hours put into the approvals required to reclaim the sea and form the launching ramps,reclamations car parking and roads and this was created again by the hard working volunteers of the club.
The project cost for the permitted plans now in June 1966 was $106000 and at a meeting in July a motion was passed to do the work by the club members. A time frame of 10 weekends was set and the backbreaking work of forming the concrete foundations large reinforced concrete piles anchored into the sea floor,huge precast floor members and retaining walls was undertaken and the savings made reducing the deficit by thousands of dollars allowing the club to proceed and together with a Golden Kiwi grant the tenders for completing the club was let in December of 1966.
The building program entered into the next year and in Febuary 1967 a full contract was let to finish the club, we are still hunting for the official opening date it was most likely 1968.
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