CRAFTING A DREAM
One boat, two mates, three years – they form the tripod that’s resulted in the unlikely transformation of a sorry, rotting derelict into a gleaming work of art.
Auckland’s Thomas Rutter and Jordan Chilcott are tight friends. They met, aged 13, on their first day at Westlake Boys’ High School in 2006. As university graduates more than a decade later, they elected to take on a small do-up project to fill their spare time – and settled on a boat restoration.
They found what they thought was the perfect candidate on Trade Me – a 1964 15ft runabout built by Brin Wilson as a one-off design. While her detailed history is unclear, the boat passed through the hands of four or five individuals who all attempted to renovate her. By the time she was listed on
