Skilful use of rocker and sheerline gave Infidel a much sweeter look than any big hard-chine yacht should rightfully enjoy. Slender and very light (even lighter in her modern guise), Infidel was nevertheless a strong all-round performer; generous mechanical stability was ensured by use of a sophisticated fabricated steel keel designed for a low CoG with most of the metal low down. Post-launch a carefully calculated volume of lead was poured into the keel once flotation had been checked


about building what was the first of the Stilet- tos, which went on to be hugely popular. ‘I couldn’t afford an engine, so it was very


light. We were also fanatical about keeping the bottom clean. We used to tie a mooring weight to a halyard and pull the boat over. Then one of the crew would walk up the mast until the keel popped out of the water and we would go around in the dinghy scrubbing the hull. We won a lot of races.’ From then on Tait was a Spencer convert.


His 30-footer came next and then when his first son was about seven years old he asked Spencer about a junior boat that kids and dads could build at home. The result was the Firebug, an 8ft trainer with a scow bow. With more than 1,350 plans sold in 35


countries, thousands have been built all over the world. Tait reckons it would have done better still in New Zealand without active factional opposition from interests vested in the Optimist and the very technical P-Class. As a repository of Spencer documents


flat-panel, hard-chine sheet plywood boats built on wide-spaced stringers and simple frames, or bulkheads, offered great down- wind and reaching performance. ‘Plus his keels were fabricated hollow steel, probably the most complicated shape and construc- tion in the boats, with the limited amount of lead poured into the very bottom of the long base of the fin and the planform optimised to lower the centre of gravity, critical for that light and narrow concept of boat. ‘Infidel was the epitome of his concept


where everything worked really well at that 60ft+ size, the deep keel and larger scale giving good enough upwind performance to be in the hunt, while running away from the rest of the fleet reaching and running.’ On the rating scene Spencer made a better


go of some of his smaller boats. His Spencer 30 Half Tonner was a popular and beautiful boat to sail, with softer lines than some of his other signature designs. Veteran New Zealand designer Don Brooke admired the Spencer 30 and also sailed a Spencer Three Quarter Tonner, which he said was equally delightful. These would probably have been successful race boats but they had the mis- fortune of hitting the race tracks at exactly the same time as Bruce Farr’s first creations, which sailed away with the silverware. Peter Tait was instrumental in the


creation of the Spencer 30. ‘I had told Spencer I was thinking about getting into a Half Tonner. I was working in the design team at Ceramco at the time. One day Spencer phoned up very excited and insisted on coming to the Ceramco offices straight away. He rushed in and spread his drawings


over my board. My Ceramco colleagues all gathered around to take a look. ‘It was a pretty boat, not a skinny chine


boat, a 30-footer with a 10ft 2in beam, a soft chine and tumblehome. But the new Farr boats cleaned us up pretty quickly,’ Tait confirms. Nevertheless, Tait has resisted all pres-


sures to replace his Spencer 30, which he has owned for more than four decades. It is full of memories of spirited class racing against sisterships, of teaching his two sons to sail, his mates jeering at the baby-chairs in the cockpit, fishing and idling about in bays. ‘It has worn a lot of hats and done them all really well.’ Like Farr, Tait grew up building and racing


Moths. Then, as a young man, he decided to build himself a keelboat. ‘I was an avid reader of magazines and had seen some of Spencer’s plans advertised. One evening I summoned my courage and went to see him at his shed. ‘He called me up to his drawing office,


which really was a sort of crude mezzanine. You had to climb up a stepladder to get there. It was a funny experience. He had this air of almost supernatural power about him, with this great mass of ginger hair and striking blue eyes. ‘I told him what I was thinking. He said: “I have the exact boat you are talking about right here on my drawing board.” He was in the process of drawing up his 24ft 10in Stiletto design. He said this one was going to be a beauty because he had got the rocker right. He was big about rocker.’ Tait strapped a pile of timber and sheets of ply to the roof of his Citroen Light 15 and set


and memorabilia Tait’s home in the Bay of Islands is regularly invaded by pilgrims who come to look at the material and swap yarns. Tait says the ‘plywood king’ label is justified but overlooks that Spencer also designed and built stylish cold-moulded boats, radio-controlled yachts and even a steel centreboard cruising yacht (there were deep fixed-keel and long-keel variants as well), which proved a very capable and fast blue ocean voyager. Tait’s collection includes 60 Spencer designs, including some quite large launches. ‘He was very versatile!’ Tait eventually lured Spencer to live out


his retirement years in the Bay of Islands, where he built a self-designed plywood-clad home with trees growing up through the middle. ‘He would arrive at my place with a carton of Pall Mall cigarettes under one arm and his favourite bottle of gin under the other and would talk, talk, talk. He had a wonderful sense of humour,’ Tait recounts. ‘He lived on one of the islands for a while


with his partner Suzie, whom he met when she was doing a dolphin study for the Department of Conservation. They were surrounded by wildlife, including a tame seagull called Jack which loved cucumber sandwiches.’ John Spencer, who had polio at an early


age and suffered poor health all his life, died in the Bay of Islands in 1996 at the age of 65, proud to have outlived all the medical predictions. In death, as in life, he defied convention. Appalled at the cost of funerals, he designed his own coffin: cheap and easy to build in plywood. Naturally.


SEAHORSE 47


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