Baverstock had to learn how to protect the aluminium’s temper during welding. The best way was to pour water over the mast.
Born in Auckland in 1940, Baverstock’s first exposure to boating came from watching yachts racing on the Tamaki River. By age 11, he had set his heart on a P Class, which he bought by working weekends at a local market garden. The elderly P leaked badly through its cracked planking, which his father Marshall ‘fixed’ by gluing pieces of plywood over them. This didn’t do a lot for its speed.
Baverstock eventually upgraded his P to a lighter version, Black Magic #54, which he raced at the Manukau Yacht Club. By age 15, he’d developed sufficient skills to compete in the 1955 Auckland Tanner Cup trials.
“I finished in the top five or six,” he recalls.
Baverstock left school that same year when Marshall signed him up for an engineering apprenticeship with New Zealand Railways.
“I wasn’t that keen on the job at the time, but it
