Paul and Valerie Somerville have owned the boat for 30 years after purchasing it from the Gillies family in Oamaru, a member of which who sailed the boat from the North Otago harbour to the Somervilles’ mooring based at their holiday house in Church Bay, Lyttelton Harbour, in 1995.
The Gillies family had owned the boat for 60 years previous to that, when George Thomas (GT) Gillies bought it from a Moeraki-based farmer in the 1930s who had had used it as a fishing vessel throughout the 1920s.
Mr Somerville said it was bittersweet, but also time, to put the boat up for sale.
"It’s quite an emotional thing for us to, as it must of been for the Gillies, as our whole family has loved it over the last 30 years.
"We’re in the same situation as the Gillies were when they sold. Our kids have all got their own interests and hobbies and maintaining a big wooden boat like that is not one of them," he said.
Mr Somerville said when they bought the boat from the Gillies family, Andrew Bernard Gillies and a friend motored the Pontiac up to Akaroa in one day and then around to Lyttelton Harbour the next day to deliver the boat to them.
"I said to him, ‘well, we’d better find a loader and transport it up by road’ and he said, ‘oh no, don’t do that, we’ll just sail it up for you."’
Originally called Reremoana, it was built by boat builder James McPherson in Dunedin, the foremost yacht and launch builder in Dunedin from 1903 to 1936, and is a single-skin kauri, 10m long with a 2.5m beam.
The Pontiac did several offshore trips, including to Akaroa in January 1939 and, in January 1940, to Stewart Island.
Mr Somerville said his family, including their three daughters and their families, had mostly enjoyed sailing the boat within the Lyttelton Harbour.
"We might go round into the bays around the peninsula, but it hasn’t got any accommodation on it, there’s no bunks or anything, so it’s really just a day cruiser.
"We’d head up the harbour with the kids, load up with picnic lunches and things like that, and sail to the bays at the end, Little Port Cooper or around to Pigeon Bay or those sorts of places."
When Waitemata Woodys, a blogsite about classic boats, posted a story in 2018 about the Pontiac, many boat enthusiasts online generated an "enormous amount of intel" on the boat including that it had been swept out to sea in Moeraki in 1936 but was rescued and bought by the Gillies family not long after.
One of Oamaru’s most prominent business families, the Gillies changed the boat name to Pontiac after they secured the Pontiac car dealing agency at Otago Motors Ltd in Dunedin in 1937.
Although a keen boatman, Mr Somerville said it was also "the right time" to sell as he and his wife were now in their 80s.
"It’s not so easy rowing out there and climbing into it now, I’m past that," he says with a laugh.
Mr Somerville said the boat had been surveyed by the Auckland Maritime Museum which almost cost them the opportunity to purchase it.
"It was going to go up to Auckland to the New Zealand Maritime Museum, but they pulled out probably because of the the cost of getting it up there."
There are many original fittings including the cabin structure and auxiliary gaff rig.
The engine is a BMC Commander 4 cylinder diesel and the boat features Pontiac marine fittings such as navigation lights cast in the shape of an Indian chief’s head.
It had been such a safe boat for the family, Mr Somerville said.
"It’s well built. It can handle anything that Lyttleton Harbour can throw at it, weather-wise," he said.
"You wouldn’t expect a wooden boat to last more than 25 years, but the Pontiac has been going for 115 years."
The classic boat is listed on Trade Me and Facebook Marketplace.
