Tauranga's oldest operating launch is going back in the water after having her bottom scrubbed and painted.

The skinny boat with the funnel was originally built as a steam powered launch. She's thought to have started life on the Hokianga more than 100 years ago, but owner Mel Reid says there are gaps in the record.

Swan – Tauranga's oldest operating launch.

He thinks Swan started life named either Mary K, or Jenny K, and was a supply boat delivering stores to settlements up the creeks before the roads went in.

Her first oil engine was installed sometime in the 1920s and coincided with a change of work from a supply boat to tow boat, taking logs down the harbour to the mill.

Mel thinks she also spent some time fishing, but there are a few decades missing.

Alan Brimblecombe, the man who began the maritime museum at Paeroa owned her, and Swan came to Omokoroa about 12 years ago.

'The kauri cabin is all original, I would say the wheelhouse was an add-on, they didn't have plywood then,” says Mel.

'Someone did a lot of work on her in the 1980s which was probably when the cabin roof was glassed.”

The planked hull is still caulked. Before Swan was lifted out Mel says he pumped a litre of water out of her hull every week

'That's bloody good after 100 years.”

The funnel is in homage to her days as a steam launch.

The elliptical counter stern was popular on commercial shipping in the mid-nineteenth century, before giving way to the much easier to build transom stern about the beginning of the twentieth century.

Swan's counter stern is one of the indicators of her age. She was built before canoe sterns or transoms appeared on power boats. Mel doesn't know for certain where or when Swan was built.

'I think we got lucky. I've had powerboats, fibreglass boats. I wanted a bigger boat.”