Gemini, an Alan Wright design.

Photographer unknown, Sea Spray Collection, New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui a Tangaroa / Profile: Photographer unknown, reproduced courtesy of Alan Wright

Alan Wright’s popular 22.5-foot (6.8m) Variant (1967) was designed as a family boat that looked good, cruised well and handled rough conditions.

Photographer unknown, Sea Spray Collection, New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui a Tangaroa

Seaquin, a Marauder 8.4. The Marauder was designed by Wright in 1977 to cater for new trends to fractional rigs, lighter displacement and more interior room.

Photographer unknown, reproduced courtesy of the Marauder 8.4 Owners Association

ALAN WRIGHT

(1931–)

Self-taught designer Alan Wright designed small to medium size keelboats to suit the average Kiwi family.

A firm base

Alan Wright began his career as an apprentice boatbuilder at the Devonport Naval Base, Auckland. After travelling overseas, he became a partner in a boatbuilding firm with Max Carter.

Wright was a teacher for the next 16 years. He taught woodwork and metalwork at Manurewa College for two years, then tutored apprentices on their national boatbuilding courses at Auckland Technical Institute. There, he began designing his own yachts.

ALAN WRIGHT

** ‘This is the sort of boat I would want’**

‘I had a small family at the time … and I thought, “This is the sort of boat I would want”.’ Apparently, many other families wanted the same.

Wright’s first design, in 1966, was developed into the Nova. This popular 28-foot (8.53m) twin-keel design was taken up by some 250 professional and backyard builders around the country.

Other successful boats included the 22.5-foot (6.8m) Variant, designed in 1967 after his father asked him for a small cruising boat. From around 1974, the Variant was produced as an all-GRP boat. More than 280 Variants were built.

ALAN WRIGHT

Getting people on the water

In 1972, Wright set up a company to build his designs, partnering with Philip Wilson. ‘Good-looking, wholesome yachts’ were his forte, but he dabbled in racers too.

The 1987 stock-market crash dramatically diminished demand for Wright’s boats. When in 1992 he was approached to help design a sailing catamaran, he jumped at the chance. This led to his interest in power cats, which he designed successfully through the 1990s until 2005.

Wright’s main contribution, though, was to get lots of regular New Zealanders onto the water.