Wolfhound: An 18-Year Journey Home to Northland

22 hours ago

6 min read

There are boats that are built to get somewhere, and then there are boats that become part of the story of the people who built them. Wolfhound is very much the latter.

When the 74-foot schooner recently sailed into Opua to clear into New Zealand after her passage from Tonga, there was something particularly fitting about her arrival.

For owners Steven and Louise Dews, Northland is not simply a destination on the chart.

It is a place they know well, a place they have called home, and now the region will become part of the next chapter in an extraordinary sailing story that began almost two decades ago.

Wolfhound's journey has already taken her thousands of nautical miles around the world, through the Caribbean, along the eastern seaboard of North America, to Nova Scotia, through Central America and the Pacific. She has been raced against classic schooners, cruised through some of the world's most remote waters and, perhaps most importantly, introduced Steven and Louise to an extraordinary network of people and places along the way.

Now, after returning to New Zealand, Wolfhound is heading into Northland – a fitting place for a yacht whose story has always been closely connected to this country.

The story began in early 2007, when Steven and Louise started talking seriously about building their dream yacht and undertaking long-distance, blue-water cruising. They knew almost immediately what the boat had to be. It had to be a schooner.

For Steven, the schooner rig had always represented something special: beautiful, graceful and distinctive, while also being particularly practical for a short-handed cruising crew. They didn't want to build a yacht purely for speed. They wanted something that was comfortable at sea, capable of long passages and beautiful enough to make the journey itself part of the experience.

After deciding to build Wolfhound in the UK, purely because they wanted their final destination to be New Zealand rather than the UK. Their research eventually led them to an article in Yachting World about a boatyard in Dorset, in southern England, which was building a schooner using wood-epoxy construction. The idea immediately appealed to them. A wooden yacht would not only provide the aesthetic they wanted, but would allow Wolfhound to take part in wooden boat festivals and classic yacht events during their travels.

On a visit to England, they went to meet builder Martyn Brake at his Dorset boatyard.

The connection was immediate.

"The minute we met Martyn we knew, he was the man to build us our dream," Louise recalls.

It was an unusual way to approach a yacht project. Rather than designing a boat and then finding someone to build it, Steven and Louise believed that finding the right builder was the most important first step. That was particularly important because, during the construction, they would be around 12,000 miles away in Australia and later New Zealand, with only the opportunity to visit roughly once a year.

The next step was finding a designer.

They had seen a yacht for sale online that contained many of the elements they were looking for. They travelled to Holland to meet the designer, Olivier van Meer, and presented him with their long list of requirements. Back in Australia, the planning continued, with Steven producing artist's impressions of the interior so Louise could visualise how their future home would look.

The preliminary plans arrived just before Christmas 2007. By February 2008, they had signed the contract with Martyn Brake.

The dream was officially underway.

What followed was an extraordinary exercise in patience, planning and attention to detail. Steven and Louise were involved in virtually every aspect of Wolfhound's creation. They worked through the interior layout, deck arrangement, windows, seating, storage and living spaces, even drawing the interior at full scale to make sure everything worked before it was committed to timber.

Her classic lines conceal a yacht designed specifically for modern blue-water cruising, with comfort and ease of handling at the heart of the brief. The result is a boat that looks as though she could have sailed out of another era, while possessing the systems and practicality required to cross oceans.

That combination is central to Wolfhound's appeal.

The name itself is deeply personal. Steven and Louise had owned Irish Wolfhounds, and the character of those dogs became part of the inspiration for the yacht. Loyalty, strength, grace and the way they moved all resonated with the qualities they wanted in their boat. There are reminders of the dogs throughout Wolfhound, including paw-print details in the table and artwork by Steven.

It is not just the boat that reflects Steven's artistic eye.

Steven Dews is an internationally recognised maritime artist, whose paintings span historic naval battles, classic yachts, the America's Cup and some of the most famous sailing vessels in history. His work is held by collectors around the world, and his understanding of the sea comes not just from studying it, but from spending his life on it.

That relationship between sailing and painting is at the heart of Steven's life. As he has put it, "I paint to sail and sail to paint."

It is a particularly appropriate philosophy for someone who designed a yacht that could quite literally become his floating studio.

Inside Wolfhound, the main saloon can be transformed into a workspace, allowing Steven to paint while aboard. His knowledge of the sea informs his paintings, while his experience as a sailor informs the way he sees the ocean. Wind, waves, light, weather and the movement of a yacht are not abstract ideas to him; they are things he has experienced first-hand.

His work can be viewed through his website, where his paintings include historic maritime scenes alongside classic yacht and America's Cup subjects. That dual life – artist and sailor – has shaped much of Wolfhound's story.

Since launching in 2016, the schooner has travelled tens of thousands of nautical miles. The original plan was to make a relatively direct delivery from the UK to New Zealand, but, as often happens when cruising, the voyage developed a life of its own. New friendships, new places and new opportunities repeatedly changed the itinerary.

In Nova Scotia, Steven and Louise became involved with the schooner racing scene. They sailed in the Nova Scotia Schooner Races and the Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race, experiencing the remarkable world of traditional schooners and the communities surrounding them.

Elsewhere, they spent extended periods cruising and meeting families and sailors who had made the ocean their home. Those relationships have become one of the most important parts of their journey.

For Steven and Louise, sailing has never simply been about getting from one place to another. It is about the people you meet along the way.

That is perhaps one of the reasons Wolfhound is such an effective ambassador for classic sailing. She has a remarkable ability to attract attention wherever she goes. People see her coming into an anchorage or sailing past and want to know more. Conversations begin. Invitations are extended. Friendships follow.

As Louise has described it, having a boat like Wolfhound is a little like having a pretty puppy – people simply come over to say hello. And now, after years of cruising the world, that same boat has arrived in New Zealand.

For the Bay of Islands Marina team, seeing Wolfhound arrive in Opua was a particularly special moment. Not because she is staying here permanently, but because Opua represents an important gateway into a region that Steven and Louise already know and love.

Their connection with Northland makes this return different from simply arriving somewhere new. They are coming back to familiar waters, familiar people and a coastline that offers exactly the sort of cruising Wolfhound was designed for.

Steven is enthusiastic about the cruising available here. His view is that visiting yachts should not simply arrive in the Bay of Islands, stop briefly and move on. The real reward is to take the time to explore. There are hundreds of coves and protected anchorages, clear water and an enormous amount of coastline to discover.

And, importantly for a couple who have spent years crossing oceans, the Bay of Islands provides an opportunity to slow down.

After years of dealing with boat maintenance in foreign countries, sourcing parts, solving problems and working around language barriers, there is an obvious pleasure in being back somewhere where the systems are familiar and help is close at hand.

But perhaps the most fitting part of Wolfhound's return is that the story is far from finished.

Steven and Louise describe this stage not as the end of their journey, but as "the beginning of the beginning."

Wolfhound was conceived in 2007, designed around their shared vision, built in a Dorset boatyard thousands of miles away, and then spent years making her way around the world. She has carried them through rough seas, into beautiful anchorages, across oceans and into the lives of countless people.

Now she is back in New Zealand.

For a yacht designed around the idea of enjoying the ride rather than rushing towards the destination, there could hardly be a more appropriate next chapter.

Wolfhound's voyage home has taken considerably longer than Steven and Louise first imagined. But perhaps that is exactly the point.

The destination was never really the story.

The sailing was.