Prospector, built in 1964, was one of Smith’s favourite designs. She was successful in local and offshore racing, placing fourth in the 1967 Whangarei–Noumea race.

Photographer unknown, Sea Spray Collection, New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui a Tangaroa / Portrait: Photographer unknown, reproduced courtesy of the Smith Family

Allen Smith’s short-ender Elusive (1962) was successful in many races.

Photograph by Louis McGuire, New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui a Tangaroa (2007.149.1)

Omega is an example of Allen Smith’s popular Easterly 30 racer–cruiser of 1970. This sturdy fibreglass design was once described as a ‘pocket battleship’.

Photograph by Louis McGuire, New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui a Tangaroa (2007.149.1)

ALLEN SMITH

(1934–2008)

Allen Smith was a gifted but relatively unsung designer with more than 80 attractive, practical, and safe yachts to his name.

Boyhood passion

Allen Smith’s passion for yacht design began as a boy in Christchurch. Eager to increase his knowledge, he would pore over the nautical publications collected by his father, who was a cabinetmaker by trade.

Whangarei calls

In 1951, when Smith was 17, his father packed up the family and sailed them north after unsuccessfully applying for a local mooring for their yacht. They settled in Whangarei where Smith first worked as an apprentice coachbuilder, before moving to boatbuilders Orams & Davies (now Orams Marine).

Later his father and he established Smiths Boat Yard.

ALLEN SMITH

Elusive success

Smith started out designing sailing dinghies, but there was little money in building them and his father advised him to build keelboats.

In 1962, he built Elusive, a 9.44-metre timber masthead sloop, short-ended in the style of an H28. In one season, Elusive won the Onerahi Yacht Club 100 and 150 Milers, the Balokovic Cup and the White Island Race, a feat never achieved before or since.

Smith’s boats regularly raced in offshore events to Noumea and Fiji during the 1960s.

ALLEN SMITH

‘Bullet-proof’ cruisers and Dragons

The ‘bullet-proof’ Easterly 30 and Pacific 38 of the 1970s were two of Smith’s best-known designs. The Easterly 30 was New Zealand’s first fibreglass yacht to have a lightweight balsawood core. The Pacific 38, designed to be quick for racing but also roomy for offshore cruising, was intended to safely handle Pacific island voyaging – which it undoubtedly did.

Smith also sparked the revival of the Dragon class in the 1980s. He was hard to beat sailing his Wild Rose in the 1990s. During this time he also designed several launches. He used his launch Calypso (a composite ply construction glassed over) to tow Wild Rose to Auckland.

‘Ask Allen’
Smith was always generous with his knowledge and welcomed questions. ‘Ask Allen,’ people would say. His death was a great loss to the New Zealand yachting community.