Ferro, named not as many think after some Hellenic god of snibbo and general debauchery but as a shortened form of the Ferro Cement Company of Australasia.
The company, which built Grafton Bridge, had Ferro designed and built by Logan here on the Waitemata in 1905.
In her life in the service of the Ferro Cement Company she did barging trips down from the cement factory at Warkworth as well as work around the major wharf constructions the company was undertaking.
Some time along the way she went into service with the Auckland Harbour Board and for decades was to be seen tearing around doing their works. Carting tradesman, towing buoys and painting boats and camels, fixing nav lights, backup pilot boat etc etc.
Some good skippers drove this boat including the laconic Canadian Ron Montgomery and the jovial Dave Kite, both have sadly now crossed the bar.
At the time of been sold out of the AHB Messrs. Coughlan and Pine were lucky to retain the services of Harold Kidd who managed to convince the Board that they were going to keep Ferro in pretty much original condition. Her fate would otherwise have been at the hand of a chainsaw wielding charterboat operator [who we think actually put in a higher bid].
Ferro is still in as an original conditionas you might call sensible. Of course modications have been carried out and she needed plenty of TLC after a hard working life. But the investment has proven well worth it to the owners.
She is fleet of foot and capable of covering plenty of miles yet.

Ferro was on the hard at the Milford Cruising Club where Chook Coughlan and a big team of enthusiastic helpers are on the final days of a year long refit.

Not just change the colour of the curtains and scrub out the bait box, I mean long refit.
Over that time I have watched them strip out every single 'modification' and 'Heath Robinson' change that has been inflicted on the boat in the last 100 years.

Bag after bag of paint scrapings, baulks of timber, miles of wiring, acres of old plywood, old fuel tanks, pipes, the list is endless.

Outwardly not a lot could be seen happening but from the time she hit the top of the slipway that all changed. Paintwork has been stripped back. Copper tingles refreshed. Bulwarks removed and replaced. Timber undercoated. Windows removed and refitted. Doors removed, refited and rehung. And every night and weekend the working party toils away..... not without a few cold ones at the end of the day to celebrate their achievements.

On the 27th of November Ferro is going back down the way... a launch that will be a symbolic guesture of her 100th birthday. Why symbolic? Nobody is quite sure when she was launched. We can pick a number of days from the tides in 1905 and how they match up to work days and the period when we know the yards were doing commercial boat rather than pleasure boat work.