Boating New Zealand - May 2018

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After inishing his apprenticeship, Bagnall worked for

boatbuilder Paul Burgess for three years before joining

Marine Steel to run its slipway.

he June 1979 Muldoon boat tax torpedoed boatbuilding

in this country and drove many from the industry. One of

these was Bagnall’s friend, boatbuilder Dave Jackson. With no

boatbuilding work of his own, Jackson rented his shed out to

amateur boatbuilders, who were exempt from the tax.

Bagnall, who previously bought Jackson’s mullet boat

Karros, decided to build a bigger cruising yacht. At Jackson’s

suggestion Bagnall approached Beau Birdsall for a design,

basically a 10.4m version of the ill-fated Ponsonby Express, but

with a centreboard instead of ixed keel.

“Beau was a very clever designer. He never provided any

ofsets but when we lofted her out the lines were perfect. He

was a lovely fella,” recalls Bagnall.

Built in 18 months of nights and weekends in Jackson’s

shed, Bagnall owned Independence for ive years but sold her

so he and his new wife heresa could buy a house.

It took until the mid-eighties before boatbuilding picked

up enough for Bagnall to return to it full-time – building a

number of displacement launches, several to his own design,

up to 15m in length.

Of all the boats he built around this time, Bagnall’s

favourite is the 12m Birdsall-designed displacement

launch Tradition. A round bilge with strip-planked kauri on

laminated frames and sheathed in DB glass, Tradition is a

handsome launch now based in Wellington.

Naturally risk-averse, Bagnall’s never been comfortable

owing large sums of money or taking on ixed contracts, so

most of these launches were built in rented premises on an

hourly rate, with the client picking up the shed rental. “I don’t

do that other stuf [contract boatbuilding]. I like to go home

and sleep at night,” he says.

But this changed when the shed at Milford Marina came

up for sale in 1999. he late John Gladden built the shed

around 1960 and it was his base for over 30 years. When

Gladden retired around 1990 he sold the shed to Chris

Bartlett, who used it for GRP boatbuilding.

Over the past 18 years Bagnall built, restored and repaired

BELOW Timber boatbuilder

Geofrey Bagnall in his shed, an

icon at Milford Marina, but now an

endangered species.