Um ... you know that boat you were restoring with your son, Brandon?
Well, it is now under 5m of water at Carey's Bay.
The 8.5m Fairy Prion motor launch disappeared without a trace at its mooring yesterday, after 65kmh northeasterly winds battered the Otago coast on Monday night.
"It's been quite a day," owner Brandon Grenfell said, as he surveyed the patch of water where his boat used to be.
"I went down to check it out and it was gone. There wasn't a sign of it. There wasn't even a bit of it sticking out of the water.
"I'd been doing it up with my dad, Herb. He doesn't know about it yet. I didn't have the heart to tell him. We were trying to get it all finished for Christmas. That was going to be our swansong."
The boat was tied fore and aft to a wharf at Careys Bay and was discovered missing at 11am yesterday.
"When I got the phone call I thought: 'Oh, no, that's the worst thing that could happen'. But, after thinking about it for a while, you get a bit more philosophical and start thinking about how to deal with the situation," Mr Grenfell said.
"It is what it is," he said, before adding with a rueful smile: "At least it's getting a good wash." A diver friend of Mr Grenfell's, Ross Funnell, assessed the damage yesterday afternoon and gave the good news the motor launch was sitting on the bottom unscathed, apart from a missing hatch cover.
The Fairy Prion was built in England from Baltic pine in 1927 and worked as a fishing boat in Bluff for many years.
Mr Grenfell bought the five-tonne launch a year ago to renovate as a pleasure craft.
"The boys were saying all the boats on the wharf were heaving about in the wind. Fortunately, the fuel tank was empty and the gearbox was out, so there was no fuel or oil to seep out."
Strops were placed under the boat yesterday and Mr Grenfell hoped it would be raised today.
He was still hoping to have it ready for Christmas.
