An Advance on the Cup

Yachting veteran Trevor Geldard wants nothing more than to win back the America's Cup, as ROBIN BAILEY finds





For a man who began his working life on the land with the dream of making farming his career, Trevor Geldard has had a huge influence on this country's marine industry.

Today he is chairman of Advance Trident Ltd, the Auckland electronics company he started 12 years ago. It is a family business he runs with sons Craig, Blair and Brett and daughter Michelle.

Supplying, installing and servicing the sophisticated equipment for commercial and recreational sailors is state-of-the-art stuff. It is a huge leap for Geldard, now 72, who recalls grinding epoxy resins in a concrete mixer as technological as things got at the beginning of the Epiglass story.

After eight years working on farms in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty, the young Geldard found himself on a farm north of Auckland owned by the father of Peter and Logan Colmore-Williams. The brothers owned Sonata Laboratories which sold imported Wella hair care products. They offered him a job in the fledgling company.

"I felt it was time for a change and, as it turned out, that came swiftly," says Geldard.

"When import licensing was introduced in the mid-1950s, the brothers had to become manufacturers virtually overnight. They did so successfully and because there is some synergy between hair products and the evolving fibreglass technology of that time - and because both brothers were keen sailors - it was logical to get involved in fibreglass and paint. So the Epiglass brand was born."

It was one thing to create the products. Selling them was a different story. Geldard found himself on the road demonstrating night after night to boat owners and amateur boatbuilders at clubs the length and breadth of the country. This grounding helped him to develop a policy of grass-roots sponsorship.

"By setting up these promotions to push our products, I discovered first-hand how effective this hands-on approach could be," he says. "And as the company grew so did our policy of sponsoring yachting and powerboat racing."

So Geldard was sympathetic when designer Ron Holland called him in 1985 to canvas a plan to enter a New Zealand team for the Admiral's Cup and use that campaign as a build-up to a challenge for the big one, the America's Cup.

By that time, Epiglass was part of Healing Industries and the company announced a sponsorship package of $1 million, with $500,000 going to each campaign. This support acted as a catalyst to launch New Zealand's first America's Cup challenge in the plastic boats in Fremantle in 1987.

Geldard was sceptical when the idea of challenging in the plastic boats was first run past him. He feared the Kiwis would be ruled out of contention. However, after many hurdles were overcome, including tailormaking Healing resins and hardeners to build the boats, and securing last-minute approval from Lloyds, the revolutionary challengers were built by Marten Marine.

The rest is history as New Zealand went on to win, defend and then lose yachting's supreme trophy.

Now we are back in the game once again and no one could be happier than Geldard, who is a past chairman of the International Yachting Trust and a life member of Yachting New Zealand. He admits to being "totally cheated" when the Swiss sailed away with the Cup. Like many others close to the event, he couldn't believe how New Zealand's defence could have gone so far astray.

"It wasn't just the cup," he says. "Our industry, generally, was reaping the benefits of having the regatta here and a lot of that disappeared.

"Much of the superyacht building and refit business we were getting has gone to Australia, where the industry gets the sort of huge government support we have never had.

"Perhaps it's time for our leaders to look at what the Aussies are doing now.

The way the new Emirates Team New Zealand under Grant Dalton has performed in a boat that was called a dog means there is hope and we will get another chance to cash in properly on an America's Cup success."