It begins with the late John Spencer (1931 to 1996). Born in Melbourne to New Zealand parents, Spencer grew up in Wellington and sailed a P Class at the Evans Bay Yacht Club.
He became friendly with the late boatbuilder/designer Athol Burns, who inspired him to start drawing boats. While Spencer studied architecture and industrial design and worked as an architect for the Auckland Education Board (AEB), his dream was to become a boatbuilder/designer.
In 1951, while he was with the AEB, he was asked by Ray Early to design a 3.6m Pennant class centre-boarder. At his daughter’s suggestion, Early named his new boat Cherub and she was such a success that others were ordered too. Thus, the Cherub Class was born.
Spencer provided measurement rules, making the Cherub a restricted one-design class. Besides specifying plywood construction, the rules determined length, beam, hull depth, chine depth and the one-design sail plan. However, tolerances allowed some design flexibility, and Spencer eventually designed seven versions of the Cherub (Mk I to Mk VII).
Others started designing Cherubs as early as the late 1950s, the first being Auckland brothers Ian and Neil Pryde. They would eventually design and build more than a dozen Cherubs which dominated the Auckland fleet for many years. Another was Hugh Sims from Napier, who won the 1965 Cherub Nationals in his self-designed Proteus.
By 1966, over 1000 Cherubs
