Alan Barber’s magnificently restored wooden catamaran was hoisted by crane and lowered gracefully into the cool waters of the Macleay River early on Friday afternoon – to the great delight of the small group of interested bystanders.

The boat, yet to be named, had taken Mr Barber 10 years to complete after he purchased the vessel as a rotting hulk from its original home at Arakoon.

“There was lots of rot when I got it,” Mr Barber said. “And with rot there’s always more than you thought there was.”

Mr Barber said he first heard of the vessel through his connections in a wooden boat club and, rather than let the boat be burned for firewood, he thought he’d buy it and do it up.

Ron and Val Miles offered their property right on the river as a place to store the boat.

It seemed more than fitting as the property, on Prince Street, has a long and illustrious history as a boat building area.

The site is directly opposite the old Scotchtown shipyards, operated by three Scottish shipbuilders, one of whom, John Ferrier, later set up a shipyard of his own on the property now owned by the Miles.

Mr Barber’s vessel was tran-sported to the Prince Street property in two parts, one hull per truckload.

“There were a couple of years where I might have only showed up once to work on it, another where I didn’t show up at all,” Mr Barber said.

“But the last three years I’ve been coming up every five or six weeks.”

He said there had been many times when he felt like throwing it all in, but eventually, after many months of labour, the hard work paid off.

“About a year ago, one of the rudders cracked, it was an absolute disaster,” he said.

“I’d been working hard for two years and it still wasn’t there.

“I got depressed, but booked myself in to see a psychiatrist and eventually he encouraged me to come back to it. I got stuck back into it and, if anything, redoubled my efforts.”

The twin-hull vessel weighs around six and a half tonnes.

Mr Barber said he had no plans to take it on a long sea voyage but would like to visit places such as Lord Howe Island, Tasmania and the Great Barrier Reef.

The boat does not yet have a name, but Alan Barber said he had considered calling it Hawke’s Bay II after the first vessel he owned and the place where he grew up in New Zeal-and.

After sea trials, he will sail the boat down the coast to Brooklyn, where it will be permanently moored – a voyage expected to take about two weeks.