The no bull yacht club
Words Alex Stone
The first in a series of shipwrecks and shenanigans along our rugged shores; we begin with an explanation of possibly the world’s most unusual yacht club burgee.
Likened by one blown-away traveller to Tin Tin's Black Island, due to its imposing black cliffs, Rakitu or Arid Island certainly looks deserving of its English name. But behind the cliffs, in a horseshoe-shaped valley, it’s quite fertile, and supported a Ngāti Rehua community for centuries, as well as a pākehā farm for over 100 years.
The Rope family farmed the island from 1956 to 2010. Bryce Rope owned a shipping company, which helped make this remote (though fertile) farm economically viable. He ran 1,000 sheep and 120 breeding cows. Though the Ropes owned a shipping company, and also built wharves around New Zealand, the Chatham, and Pitt Islands, they declined to make this special island any more accessible. There’s still no wharf at The Cove, the only anchorage on Rakitu, a sheltered NW-facing tight little bay. Space for only a dozen boats.
The stories go that Bryce Rope needed to get a new starter motor for a bulldozer delivered to Rakitu. Legendary seaplane pilot, Fred Ladd, dropped it out of the window while passing, expecting it to land harmlessly in a paddock. But it conked the island’s prize bull on the head, killing him instantly. A laconic message from the Ropes to the seaplane read: “Part arrived safely, bull dead.”
The dead bull features on the flag of the (fairly informal) Arid Island Yacht Club, which holds one race to the island each year. Sometimes. And on these days, a curious ritual unfolds. First, there’s the occasional reading of ‘a former poet laureate’s rendition of an ode about a farting competition’. Then new members of the club are invited to grovel in the sand for several metres, then crawl on hands and knees up a sheep ramp to be tapped on the shoulder by the commodore with a giant blow-up inflatable plastic hammer. And to then be welcomed into the club and given a jar full of bull semen (cream and whiskey) to swallow. After which, there’s the AGM of the Arid Island Yacht Club.
The Rope family sold the island to the NZ Government for $1.8M in 1993. They had much higher offers to sell to overseas celebrities, but wanted it to stay in local, collective ownership. The island is now a DOC reserve. Rakitu at 329ha could become an outer Gulf equivalent to the famous open sanctuary of Tiritiri Matangi (245ha).
Unusual plants on Rakitu are large-leaved forms of rangiora and kawakawa. Tui, morepork, grey warblers, kingfishers, fantails, silvereyes, shining cuckoos and little blue penguins live on Arid Island, plus introduced pasture birds like paradise shelducks, spur-winged plovers and welcome swallows. Introduced wekas also seem happy to be there.
Many other species have disappeared, but could be returned: whiteheads, kakariki and tomtit, pied shags, bellbirds and pipits. But the sheep, cows and the bulls are long gone. And won’t be coming back.