In the best of shape
“I was born in Tauranga in 1945 and we moved to Bucklands Beach the following year. And I’ve been here ever since,” he chuckles.
We should begin Mick’s story with his father John, who at the start of WWII was a leading seaman aboard the light cruiser HMS Achilles. On December 13, 1939, Achilles and her fellow cruisers HMS Exeter and HMS Ajax fought the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee off the River Plate in Argentina. The damaged German ship retreated to Montevideo before scuttling herself four days later.
After the battle Achilles steamed to New Zealand for a refit, before serving the remainder of the war in the Pacific region under the New Zealand flag.
Meanwhile John had been transferred to coastal patrol duties aboard the , spending much of the war searching for Japanese submarines between Leigh and Little Barrier Island. During leave periods he built the 12m Bailey ketch with kauri requisitioned from the Naval Dockyard. Towards the end of the war, John was manpowered into his father’s
