The John Hughes

Story Every October, the Multihull Yacht Club hosts the Coastal Classic Race; John Hughes has built several winners.

Over four decades boatbuilder John Hughes has earned a reputation for innovation, clever thinking and versatility. His portfolio covers the full spectrum – lightweight racing multihulls to timber classics, high tech composite boats to traditional planking, and design to restoration. Growing up in West Auckland, Hughes developed a love affair with boats, triggered by stories of his English grandfather, H R Hughes. He was a UK boatbuilder who had received an award for ferrying soldiers back across the English Channel from the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation.

After playing around in a Sabot dinghy and building model yachts, the younger Hughes and his father Don built a P-class and then a Hartley 16 runabout.

Hughes excelled at technical drawing and carpentry at school. In 1975, local boatbuilder John Lidgard offered him a job during the Christmas holidays; one of his first jobs was to make a pair of hanging knees for the cabin of a 10m Lidgard Imp. Hughes completed the task so quickly and competently that Lidgard offered him an apprenticeship on the spot.

Over the next four and half years Hughes learned how to

build yachts in multi-skin, laminated timber from Lidgard, one of the best in the business,.

“John was and is a great guy and he was wonderful to work for,” says Hughes.

Another positive influence in design and drawing was Alan Wright, who was Hughes’ tutor at Unitec.

Apprenticeship complete, Hughes had a year boatbuilding in Australia before accepting an offer to help finish Jim Kilroy’s Kialoa IV in Florida. Designed by Ron Holland, Kialoa IV was then the largest Kevlar/grp composite racing yacht in the world; the experience opened Hughes’ eyes to the possibilities of GRP composite boatbuilding.

After Kialoa IV, Hughes built kitset boats in the USA before returning to New Zealand in 1981 where he was soon invited to sail on Richard Pilkington’s Great Barrier Express (GBE) designed by Malcolm Tennant. Until then, Hughes had been a monohull sailor; one ride changed his life: “I gotta get one of these.”

He immediately started building a timber GBE, but impatience got the better of him and, after finishing the hulls, he bought a pair of GRP production hulls from Pilkington.

Hughes launched his GBE Exposif just in time for that year’s Coastal Classic Race from Auckland to Russell. In one of the windiest races on record, he lost the rig in a 50-knot squall off the Whangarei Heads.

“It was almost a relief,” he says. “I thought, ‘Good, now we can go home.”

Shortly afterwards airline pilot Alistair Russell asked Hughes to build a Blade Runner 43 designed by Malcolm Tennant. This became Afterburner. Built slightly longer, wider and bigger-rigged than the stock version, Afterburner would dominate the Auckland multihull scene for many years – she won five Coastal Classics outright. Afterburner put Hughes on the map as one of the premier custom multihull builders in the country.

An American businessman living in Thailand then commissioned Hughes to build another Tennant Blade Runner 43, Limelight, but the client never took delivery. Hughes stored Limelight for many years before buying her and renaming her Slime. He still owns her.

Hughes’ reputation grew, and there was no storage of work. Over the next five years he built a 12m Ron Given powercat, a Dick Newick 12m trimaran, an 11m cruising catamaran and a two Tennant 10m Turissimos. He also completed several multihull refits – one was to lengthen Afterburner.

In the early 1990s, Hughes became involved in the Ron Given-designed catamaran Split Enz, then owned by a syndicate consisting of Jason Price, Ruddy Dekker and Neil Strong. Hughes made several modifications to Split Enz to enhance performance, and the syndicate raced her hard. By the time the catamaran was sold to a Noumea yachtsman, Split Enz had won countless races including six Coastal Classics outright.

In the 1997 event, Split Enz set a record time of seven hours, 20 minutes and 51 seconds, which stood until 2009.

Meantime, Hughes and his girlfriend Juliet, who is now his wife, moved to a 16-acre waterfront block at Mahurangi East, an hour and half’s drive north of Auckland. After building a 22m x 16m boatbuilding shed with an attached apartment, Hughes again hung out his shingle.

One of his first jobs was another modification to Afterburner to enhance performance. A few years later, Afterburner was sold to Californian sailor Bill Gibbs – he is still winning races with

Hughes then built the 15.2m Ron Given-designed Occam’s Razor for the late John Vincent ( Boating NZ, July 1999). His next project was the Jeff Schionning-designed, 13.5m cruiser/racer catamaran Mcmoggy for Rex Mccamish ( Boating NZ, February 2001). As a fast cruiser, Mcmoggy performed excellently on the racetrack and won Division Six in the 2004 Coastal Classic.

Then came a collaborative effort with his friend and boatbuilder Craig Partridge in a fast, 14m bridgedeck catamaran. Hughes did the design; Partridge built the moulds. Partridge then built Catenza ( Boating NZ, October 2003) to this design while Hughes built a sistership Zephuros, ( Boating NZ, April 2005), named for the Greek God of the west wind.

She was commissioned by a Japanese owner and featured plenty of innovative Hughes thinking, especially the structure around the lifting rudders and the twin Honda outboards.

“Zephuros was always one of my favourite boats,” says Hughes. “Despite the house in the middle, she sails really well.”

Zephuros’ original owner has died, and his son keeps the boat in Japan where she stands out like a hawk among a flock of pigeons.

For Hughes, the past 10 years have been more about restorations and repairs. One project was to build new, big-volume wave-piercing floats for the racing trimaran Dragon, which Chris Cochran built in the early 1990s, mostly from recycled bits and

pieces. The only original part of Dragon left is the cabin top, which started life as the hull of an 18ftskiff.

Another Hughes rebuild was Hornblower, a 11.7m light displacement keeler designed and built by Jan Kessel. Hornblower was launched in 1974 and sold by Kessel 18 months later to Jim Boyd, who sold her back to Kessel in 1993. Kessel’s daughter Lyn and her husband Andrew Peat took over the boat from Kessel and in 2007 commissioned Hughes to virtually rebuild Hornblower. She was relaunched in 2009 and looked stunning. The Peats have since bought a bigger yacht and recently sold Hornblower to Kevin Lidgard.

Another Hughes project was to repair the 1937 Colin Wilde-designed and built, 13.4m sloop Ngataringa, which was badly damaged in 2010 by another yacht breaking free from her mooring in Algies Bay. With her stern sections munched away almost to the waterline, Hughes and fellow boatbuilder Jacques De Kervor rebuilt Ngataringa to original condition. Her owner, Greg Scopas, had high praise for Hughes and believes Ngataringa is better than new.

Another recent job was to repair the 7.7m classic yacht Serene, the first keel yacht designed and built by the late Des Townson. Serene was insured but, in common with many timber classics, the cost of repairs exceeded her insured value and a write-off was on the cards.

However people rallied round, and Hughes rebuilt the 2m2 hole in Serene’s side using kauri donated by Bill Townson, Des’ younger brother. Serene was relaunched a few months ago, and her owner, Tommy Ralph, is delighted to have her back in the water.

Another recent relaunch was Hughes’ boat Slime, back in the water after eight years in his shed being worked on part-time. Slime now has inboard sleeping pods, carbon/ composite afterdeck and beams, a longer waterline, a bigger rig, square-topped mainsail and new foils. She is glued together as opposed to her original, bolted alloy beams.

Slime’s always been a quick boat. With Juliet helming, she won first on line, first multihull on handicap, and the line and handicap double in Division Six in the 2002 Coastal Classic. The recent mods should make her considerably faster.

Highly regarded as an innovative thinker, Hughes gravitates to jobs that challenge him. If it’s interesting, challenging or a bit quirky, GRP or timber, John Hughes could be your man. B

“Afterburner would dominate the Auckland multihull scene for many years.”