History of the MV Flightless, formerly the MV Moa

The MV Flightless now offers private exclusive boat charters and overnight scenic boat cruises in the Marlborough Sounds of New Zealand but formerly she was the MV Moa, an Inshore Patrol Craft with the NZ Navy.

Flightless is pictured below with one of the Navy’s new replacement Inshore Patrol Vessels (IPV) vessels, the HMNZS Taupo in the background. Taupo is 55 metres long and can cruise at 25 knots.

MV Moa was one of five Inshore Patrol Craft (IPC) built in
New Zealand by WECO in Whangarei for the New Zealand Navy. She was launched in 1983. These vessels were used by customs and for training, survey and patrolling New Zealand’s territorial waters and also for search and rescue. Some of these vessels spent time in the Pacific Islands.

The last IPC vessel owned by the Navy and used for dive operations was sold to a private owner in 2010. All are now operating as charter, patrol and pleasure craft in New Zealand and, as far away as, Canada.

M.V. Moa was purchased in 2007 and renamed MV Flightless. It spent two years being refitted for charter work before doing a 3 month circumnavigation of the North Island on its last pleasure cruise visiting Tauranga, the Coromandel, Mercury Islands, Great Barrier Island, Auckland, the Bay of Islands, the Three Kings and the Hokianga Harbour before returning down the West Coast of New Zealand.

In 2010 the charter conversion was completed and she was put into charter survey to accommodate private exclusive boat charters and overnight scenic boat cruises.