WETA MARINE - HISTORY OF THE WETA DESIGN
Weta Marine founders Roger and Chris
Kitchen saw a gap in the New Zealand market for a safe, stable, easy to rig, easy to stow, high
performance, recreational family boat. Twenty years ago there were a variety of
surf cats available but there had been little or no development since then and
many sailors were looking for a boat that could be easily handled, single
handed, both on and off the water. There
was no centreboard yacht available that could be used both by kids learning to
sail and adults looking for high performance and thrills.
In 2001 on a trip to France Roger and Chris
were really impressed with the way the French used multihulls in their Learn to
Sail programs with 3 young children learning together on a 3.5 m cat. On
returning to New Zealand they commissioned a multihull designer to sketch up some hull forms
that fitted their brief.
They built the first Weta using foam/glass
construction and launched it early 2003.
The boat had potential but it needed a huge amount of development. Over the
following 3 years the Weta underwent trials with many design changes with input
from some of New Zealand’s top sailors. The Weta created a lot of interest both nationally
and internationally, especially from people who saw it as being a truly
versatile family yacht that looked so good. Weta Marine was formed in February 2004 and
the decision was made to manufacture the Weta.
2006 was spent setting up a top quality
production line in China and sourcing world class components for the boat. The first production Weta was sold in New Zealand in October 2006. 2007 was a
time of expansion into a number of overseas markets where there is now a great
team of enthusiastic hard working distributors in; China, France, Netherlands,
New Zealand, Sweden, Thailand, UK and USA.
By Dec 2007, 74 Weta had been
manufactured.
The Weta has evolved over a number of years
with various people contributing to the design. Some were commissioned
and others have made important contributions giving freely of their advice and time.
The Chinese manufacturer and sailmaker have also made significant contributions
to the success of the design and have been excellent to work with.
There
are a number of people/companies/organisations who have made a significant
contribution to the success of the Weta Marine design team. These include:
Mike
Bullot, David Charlesworth, John Cliffe, Jason Daniels, Gaastra, Harken NZ,
Warwick Kitchen, Land & Ocean, Vince Lettice, NZ Trade & Enterprise, Graeme
Robbins, TC Design and Markus Winter.