Stormbird: 36ft Yacht Pop Jorgensen Built For Himself

1974-1981

Build Date

Peter ‘Pop’ Jorgensen

Boat Builder

36 ft

Length

10.8 ft

Beam

Building and Launching Stormbird

Said to be Peter ‘Pop’ Jorgensen’s dream boat, Stormbird was designed and built by Jorgensen at his Waikawa Bay boatyard during his retirement. He used karri for the framing and kauri for the planks. The designs are dated 1974 but it took him seven years to complete the build as he launched his new boat on the 26 December 1981.

Jorgensen’s Danish whakapapa definitely shone in this boats lines and design. Stormbird is his most “Danish” design and even has a Danish Kroner under the mast. The kroner has the year Jorgensen brought the land for his boatyard on it. To get the design right Jorgensen used the Harrison Butler’s Metacentric Analysis to calculate how the boat could achieve the right balance and handling whilst under sail. Harry Jorgensen recounts on jorgensenboats.nz that all the Jorgensen and Sons sail boats were designed using these principles. Harry also recalls that he did the calculations for Peter Jorgensen when designing Stormbird. They made a model and towed it heeled to check the design was right.

Cruising in Stormbird

Jorgensen had planned to use Stormbird for coastal and Pacific cruising with his wife Phyllis but his health prevented him from using the boat as much as he probably would have liked.

After Jorgensen it is unclear who owned Stormbird until Rick Allender purchased her in 1999. He has used Stormbird to do two circumnavigations of the North Island in New Zealand and extensive cruising in the Marlborough Sounds and the Northeast coast of the North Island. In 2015 he installed a Beta 38 engine to replace the Volvo MD3B Stormbird previously had. Other than this Stormbird is unchanged from the original plans and retains the original timber mast and spars. In 2021 Allender was berthing Stormbird in Westhaven Marina, Auckland.

References

To research Stormbird we used jorgensenboats.nz and Rick Allender’s account of Stormbird’s history. For images of Stormbird go to jorgensenboats.nz/boats

Kualani – Built by Jorgensen and Sons Ltd, Kualani was a luxury boat

Hine Moana II – 35ft launch built by Jorgensen and Sons Ltd. in 1963.

Mermaid – luxury launch built by Jorgensen and Sons Ltd. in 1991

Saga – The first boat built by Pop Jorgensen in NZ.