Previous owner Mike Joy writes in 2011:
Richard Carll and I owned Yvonne from early 80s until the 90s we bought her on the hard
stand at Lowry Bay, she was basically just a hull and decks at that stage
after a major rebuild by a shipwright, (sorry cant remember his name) but
he spent 8000 hours on her refastening, raising her topsides 1 plank,
redecking her in ply, fitting a low coach roof (with very ugly rectangular
ports and sheathing hull in fibreglass. The fibreglass of course cracked
due to hull movement, the triple skins with no frames meant they moved
heaps. So after a few months in the water and the glass cracking the
previous owner had her out of the water. we bought her for $16,000 and
then spent the next 2 years removing the glass, fitting her interior out,
adding a 25hp ford diesel motor, rigged her with a deck stepped 46 foot
spruce mast (supposedly from a yacht that had sunk in Wellington Harbour).
She was not gaff rigged. We relaunched Yvonne around 1983 (then 90 years
old). She took a few litres of water in the first hour and then barely a
drop, for the next 10 years. We sailed her across the strait many times a
number of trips to Durville, Nelson and Tasman Bay over the next 10 years,
she was based in Lowry Bay first then Mana for a few years and then Picton
on a mooring outside McManaway marine near the ferry terminal for many
years. She sailed like a dream a very quick tender yacht but with her low
freeboard a little wet, on some rough Cook Strait crossings we joked we
should wear wetsuits masks and snorkels.
My dad, Trevor Joy, and his friend Jack Snow bought our shares in Yvonne
in the early 1990s and Trevor’s brother Foster (my Uncle) bought the other
half share mid 1990s and contained to sail her around the sounds and
Nelson, she appeared in a TV ad at one stage, I think for the National
bank. Around 7 years ago she was sold to her present owner in Lyttleton
and on her delivery voyage off Cape Campbell a crewman was struck by the
boom after a broach and gybe and lost overboard (his body was found weeks
later of the Wairarapa Coast.
Much of the original parts we had like cockpit coamings and traditional
gear was given to John Palmer and ended up on Rona.
