TRIPLE HAPPY
It’s a story too, not of a boat alone, but of dedicated efforts by visionaries and craftsmen, to preserve a precious piece of New Zealand’s boating heritage. And, after a family’s 84-year on-and-off relationship with a lovely boat, it has a happy ending, too. What’s not to like? If all this sounds confusing, perhaps it’s best to go back to the beginning.
Happy Days is a venerable, vintage inboard-powered motorboat. Built in 1933 in Picton, she’s a John L. Hacker design, of the famous Hacker Craft company. These boats are American icons. The kind of gleaming, varnished, mahogany speedboats we associate with movies about the Roaring Twenties (before the Crash), and the days of rum-running during Prohibition.
A fleet of them was used in the memorable 1975 movie . They also featured in the Venice boat chase scene in . Famous Hacker Craft have evocative names like , , , , , , , , . And , the fastest boat in the world in 1912.
