The Arahuha
DEV Arahura was a roll-on/roll-off train ferry that operated on the Interislander service between Wellington and Picton in New Zealand from 1983 until 2015.
She was built in 1981 to replace the ageing Aramoana and her sister ship, the Aranui on the Wellington-Picton route.
She is the second inter-islander to sport the name Aruhura, after the earlier SS Aruhura of 1905. She is notable for rescuing passengers from a sinking cruise liner, the Mikhail Lermontov, which ran aground near Port Gore and sank.
The vessel can carry 60 railway wagons, 27 small trucks and 100 private cars. The trip takes approximately 3 hours and 20 minutes. The Arahura was built in Denmark at the Aalborg Vaerft A/S shipyard, and has been in service since 1983. Arahura is Maori for "Pathway to Dawn". Her current port of registry is Wellington, New Zealand.
In December 2014, KiwiRail announced that Arahura would be retired in 2015 after 32 years in service. Kaiarahi was chartered to replace her on the route.[1] Arahura's last scheduled passenger voyages were on 29 July 2015, operating the 14:45 sailing to Picton and the 18:45 sailing to Wellington. The last freight journey took place over the following night. She had completed more than 52,000 crossings and 13 million km with four million passengers carried.
On 3 October 2015, renamed Ahura and with her Interislander livery painted out, she departed Wellington, bound for the Alang scrapyard in India, being beached there on 3 November.[2] Scrapping was completed in late January 2016.