The roots of Frostbite trace back to 1926 when 20 canoe enthusiasts founded the Wakatere Canoe Club (WCC). One of those was the late Jack Brooke, whose daughter Judy Salthouse recently featured in this column.
Initially, the club focussed on paddling canoes. However, interest soon shifted to sailing canoes. This stimulated interest in sailing dinghies, and the club was renamed the Wakatere Boating Club (WBC).
In 1932, Brooke designed a 14-foot ‘skimmer’ dinghy to be built inexpensively in plywood. Club members helped build a fleet of these dinghies, which they named the ‘Wakatere’. While the Wakatere wasn’t necessarily the best dinghy for the Waitemata Harbour’s chop, it nonetheless proved popular and by 1933, 39 had been built.
On February 2,1936 a violent storm, later described as a one-in-a-hundred-year event, hit Auckland, causing widespread damage. Hundreds of trees were blown over, and more than 40 moored boats were driven ashore. Most of the WCC clubhouse and over half of the members’ boats and canoes were destroyed.
Losing so many boats stimulated a search for a dinghy that was
