RETROS AND CLASSICS
The Geoff Entrican Story
Born 1922, Entrican grew up in Takapuna and his life-long love of boats began with mucking around in dinghies and then racing the Z Class Ranoni off Takapuna Beach.
He seriously considered becoming a yacht designer, but in those days that wasn’t considered a financially viable career. Instead, he opted for a civil engineering degree at Canterbury University.
Aged 21 and with WWII in full cry, Entrican left uni in 1943 to join the Royal New Zealand Engineers, commonly called the Sappers. He served the remainder of the war with the New Zealand Engineers in Six Field Company, much of it in Italy.
There, the retreating Axis troops had blown up many bridges, culverts and passes. Sappers were in high demand rebuilding them to enable the Allied forces to continue advancing.
“Dad didn’t talk much about the war, apart from saying how much he enjoyed designing and building bridges,” says daughter Jose. “He said they were a lot like boats.”
Entrican remained with Six Field Company until VE day, then spent some time in Scotland before returning home to finish his engineering degree at Auckland University. He obtained this with honours in 1947, and initially worked for Shell Oil, then later the Manapouri power station tunnel project and the Tuai project at Waikaremoana, before going out on his own.
In the early 1950s he’d met and married Pat (nee Dixon) and the couple settled in Howick. Entrican built a family home and the couple had two daughters, Annette and Jose.
While sailing was always a major passion, Entrican was pragmatic enough to realise that launches made for easier family cruising. He owned several, including the 7.3m Rumrunner, which he’d designed and had the late Owen Woolley build. “We had wonderful summer holidays in those launches,” recalls Jose.
Entrican’s love of yacht design had started much earlier. His first design, a shapely 6.7m sloop, dates to 1937, but she was never built. But his T Class design, Quiver, and his Y Class Avalon, were both built, the latter performing exceptionally well in Wellington. Entrican also owned the Arrow Class Brue.
In 1966 he designed the scow-shaped 12-footer, Pink Panther, which he and boatbuilder Jack Taylor built. With Taylor helming, the pair were one of four New Zealand boats competing in the 12’ Class 1967 Inter-dominions in Sydney. Sadly, the Australian boats proved much lighter and quicker.
“We weren’t weight-conscious in New Zealand in those days, but the Australians were. Our boats were nowhere near as good,” recalls Taylor.
When the Len Morris Mk II Moth became popular here after its adoption by the Blockhouse Bay Yacht Club in 1958, Taylor built the first Mk II Moth in Howick, inspiring Entrican to get into the class too.
Entrican designed several Moths for himself including Black Panther and YSOB ( You Silly Old Bugger), the latter featuring twin asymmetric daggerboards. But the lanky Entrican struggled to get comfortable in Moths and, to stretch his frame, would often stand on the downwind legs. A life-long smoker, he’d often enjoy a roll-your-own while sailing.
He also built his own Moth sails and, predating America’s Cup sailmaking technology by more than 40 years, built a timber mould of the mainsail shape he wanted in the family living room. He and Jose would lay up panels of sailcloth and stitch them together, the pair naming their sails Whizzmouse Sails.
Entrican raced Moths well into his 50s. In those days, the Howick Sailing Club had an annual competition against Navy sailors in cutters and whalers out of Devonport. One year Entrican organised a crew of youngsters, including daughter Jose and Grant Powell, who’d later own two Entrican boats.
In 1973, Entrican got into keelboats by designing and building the IOR quarter-tonner Boomer. Designed to the IOR rule, Boomer featured well-rounded sections, considerable tumblehome and a lifting keel.
In certain conditions, she was very fast and finished second in the New Zealand 1974 PGH Lynn Quarter Ton Cup Championships behind the late Phil Atkinson’s Demon Tweaker. Incidentally, Boomer is still around and was recently seen at Herald Island.
Entrican greatly admired American yacht designer Phil Bolger, especially his original and innovative thinking. Like Bolger, Entrican was intrigued by sharpies, and in the early 1970s designed and built the 7.7m sharpie, Warts an’ all.
The philosophy underpinning Warts an’ all was a boat that cost much the same as a 4.8m trailer yacht. Entrican built her from treated pine construction ply and galvanised nails. Sheathed in canvas and house paint, Warts an’ all was finished to Entrican’s usual 10m standard – in other words, she looked great from 10m.
The low-cost ketch rig had an OK dinghy sail as a mizzen, with a Finn dinghy sail on the mainmast – “an OK chasing a Finn” as Entrican put it. The unstayed timber spars were homemade and a mizzen staysail could be hoisted between them.
While the accommodation was basic, compared to an average 4.8m trailer yacht it was luxurious. Typically thorough, Entrican carried out a self-righting test.
With the concept proven, after three years ownership he sold Warts an’ all to his friend Alistair Rowe, who refined the accommodation and added a Cherub jib to improve pointing. Thus the rig became an OK chasing a Finn, chasing a Cherub and Entrican later altered the plans to suit.
A few years later Rowe offered Warts an’ all to Grant Powell, then a financially-strapped university student, on the understanding he would use the boat regularly and would pay her off over time.
One reason for the generous offer was Grant Powell’s long-time involvement with Warts an’ all, which started by helping Entrican with last minute painting prior to launching and crewing on the maiden sail. “That was a real honour,” says Powell.
Over the next nine years, Powell cruised Warts an’ all extensively. For example, the first summer he owned the yacht, he undertook a 50-day cruise to Whangaroa and back.
Entrican, meanwhile, had designed a bigger, 10m sharpie – Tokoroa – also built from tantalised pine construction ply, lapstrake fashion. This 10m sharpie cost about the same as a typical 7.8m yacht.
He was a great scrounger of bits to incorporate into his boats and he was a fast boatbuilder. While armchair admirals endlessly pondered their study plans, Entrican would have built his boat and gone sailing. For him boats were there to be sailed and used, not objects to be babied and fussed over.
He designed an economical 9.4m cruising launch for Powell’s father Laurie, who built it over four years outside the family home. Typically, Entrican decided the launch’s beam by measuring the width of Powell’s driveway.
Named Amazing Grace, the launch featured a steel keel, wide enough to hold the engine, fuel and water tanks, bolted to a flat plywood bottom. Besides locating all the weighty items low in the boat, this steel structure hugely stiffened the launch and meant it could be beached virtually anywhere.
Entrican, who never used a computer, did all his calculations with a slide rule and, according to Laurie Powell, these were highly accurate.
For example, he designed Amazing Grace’s cabin top to be built from three skins of five-millimetre plywood, laminated over a jig. But when removing a laminated plywood or timber structure from a jig there’s always a degree of spring back, which can be unpredictable. Entrican predicted Amazing Grace’s cabin top spring back accurate to two millimetres. Laurie Powell still owns Amazing Grace to this day and loves it.
As he reached his 80s, Entrican became physically frail and for easier sailing, asked Grant Powell if he’d to swap Tokoroa for Warts an’ all. Now married, Powell accepted with alacrity and found the bigger sharpie far more commodious and capable.
One year he entered Tokoroa in the Bay of Islands Tall Ships race where they beat a 11m Herreshoff on line. Powell, who owned Tokoroa for nearly 20 years, loved the yacht and only sold
her when work and family commitments began compromising his sailing time.
Entrican too was eventually forced to give up sailing and sold Warts an’ all in the mid-90s. However, he carried on designing and remained very interested in boats until his death in 2011 aged 89.
Prior to this, Powell had persuaded him to collate his designs into a substantial folder. Looking through it reveals one fascinating design after another: paddling canoes, a sailing canoe, rowboats, tenders, racing dinghies, sharpies, dories, cruising yachts, launches, a barge, timber masts, sails, a tandem keel, an anchor and even a house. Each plan reveals Entrican’s innovative and clever thinking.
As my friend Neil Chalmers puts it: “Some people see outside the box, Geoff could see around the corner.”
Entrican was an eccentric character and very much his own man. He didn’t suffer fools gladly and anyone asking stupid questions about his designs would get a short, pithy shift.
He never sought the limelight and, apart from his friends and disciples at the Howick Sailing and Shelly Park Cruising Clubs, he received little recognition for his design abilities.
Few people know he won a world award for his engineering work in the earthquake strengthening of concrete structures. Even though the publicity would have helped his engineering career, Entrican specifically requested news of his award remain unpublished.
His passion was designing and building low-cost, easily-built boats and the few who own them are blessed with workmanlike, seaworthy boats. Those boats and the people whom Entrican inspired to get out on the water in them, remain his best testament.
Geoff Entrican, yacht designer and engineer, like his boats, was very much a one-off. B