Page 133 - Bulletin 8 2004

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QE2 a pleasure boat or not? Was the Iona a pleasure boat? Is a boat used for sport fishing a
pleasure boat or a fishing boat? I will discuss what we generally regard to be pleasure or,

perhaps more appropriately, leisure, boats.

There is some paucity in the records regarding the early leisure boats but it seems that the

Hare family had the first leisure boat, the Voyager, with her launching recorded as having
taken place on 27 August 1926. She appears to have been a typical round-bilged

displacement boat and was built by the Cape Town Shipwrights and Boat Building Co. Ltd.
at the Victoria Basin. She was 34 feet long and 11 feet wide, with a long low coach-roof

enclosing what was probably a large comfortable area below deck, and with a separate
much smaller area below deck forward reached by its own hatch. (Fig. 3.21). This was in

all likelihood for the crew who, unlike today’s crews on boats of this type, were paid hands

who kept the boat ready at the owner’s pleasure. Although a motor boat, she was also
rigged for sailing and was often sailed. (Fig. 3.22 & 3.23).

The boat builders, who certainly by location were the predecessors of the later well known
firm of Louw and Halvorsen, appear the have been the Thorneycroft agents, which was the

engine chosen for Voyager.

A press report at the time quotes her owner, Mr. W. G. Hare, as offering her services for
official use for rescue purposes, following the drowning of two fishermen at Gordon’s Bay

about two months previously. While officialdom of the day did not respond to Mr. Hare’s

offer, Voyager effected several rescues of boats and crews in the area which were duly
reported by the press of the day. (Fig. 3. 24).

Next seems to have come Sir Abe Bailey who had the same shipwrights build a larger boat

than Voyager, the Clewer. This was named after his school, Clewer House, Windsor, in
England. This boat was 40 ft. long, the additional length making it substantially larger than