Sailboat Manufacturing History

[TooCoys]

Why are sailboats so hard to follow, or learn? Its not like Ford or Chevy. You cant exactly trace the Mustang of sailboats back to a 1964 model. It also seems confusing because there is usually subsets of models within a manufacturers line.

For instance, because its all I know, there are Hunters, but then there are the Cherubini designed Hunters.

It also seems that there are only a few major brands of sail boats in the US, that "mass" produced boats. Off the top of my head I can think of Hunter, Catalina, Oday, McGregor, Pearson, and maybe a few others. The rest of what I read about seem to be short run makes with only a few models made.

How do you determine who is the "luxury" sedans and who is the "economy" cars of the sail boat world? And in the grand scheme of things, how much does a designers name play into things? Are the Cherubini Hunters better built than the Hunters of later years?

[rbk]

Generalized, designers makes designs and yards build boats. There are good and bad designs from good and bad designers, and there are good yards that produce bad designs and bad yards that produce good designs. Good business models from bad yards and bad business models from good yards. Does that muddy the waters enough? Economy plays a big part of it, a good design from a great yard at the wrong time can mean a limited production line. Also a poorly sourced material can tarnish a good yard and designs name. So many variables play a part and a top notch producer today making THE best boat could go out of business tomorrow, it's just the way it is. Time is the real test as to which designs and yards stand the test.

[newhaul]

There are or were many production manufacturers (most are.out of production now)
Most makes are.recognised by the designers . Like if I were to say joseph mcglassen
That brings to mind the islander sailboats. John brandlemeyer brings to mins the.spencer . And so on . Also verious designers within a brand say something about the perticular boats within that line. Lastly a pedagree is actually not that difficult to follow you just need to know where to look.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by TooCoys

Why are sailboats so hard to follow, or learn? Its not like Ford or Chevy. You cant exactly trace the Mustang of sailboats back to a 1964 model. It also seems confusing because there is usually subsets of models within a manufacturers line.

For instance, because its all I know, there are Hunters, but then there are the Cherubini designed Hunters.

It also seems that there are only a few major brands of sail boats in the US, that "mass" produced boats. Off the top of my head I can think of Hunter, Catalina, Oday, McGregor, Pearson, and maybe a few others. The rest of what I read about seem to be short run makes with only a few models made.

How do you determine who is the "luxury" sedans and who is the "economy" cars of the sail boat world? And in the grand scheme of things, how much does a designers name play into things? Are the Cherubini Hunters better built than the Hunters of later years?

On answer for you is that Cherubini was the main designer for hunter in the early years . There are two newer designes of the hunter 27 so identifying by designer makes tracing lineage easier. In sofar as sourceing repair parts for your model.

[TooCoys]

Originally Posted by newhaul

There are or were many production manufacturers (most are.out of production now)
Most makes are.recognised by the designers . Like if I were to say joseph mcglassen
That brings to mind the islander sailboats. John brandlemeyer brings to mins the.spencer . And so on . Also verious designers within a brand say something about the perticular boats within that line. Lastly a pedagree is actually not that difficult to follow you just need to know where to look.

So its more or less like architects? Frank Lloyd Wright designed multiple houses, but not all of them were built by the same construction company.

So is it better to look for designers than it is to look for manufacturers? Or is it like searching for the holy grail of a combination of designer/mfg?

[Island Time O25]

Originally Posted by TooCoys

So its more or less like architects? Frank Lloyd Wright designed multiple houses, but not all of them were built by the same construction company.

So is it better to look for designers than it is to look for manufacturers? Or is it like searching for the holy grail of a combination of designer/mfg?

Many less known designers/builders were/are actually just tweaking formerly/already successful designs by others. Those boats, if built by a decent enough yard, often give you the best bang for your dollar. Like Kaufman 47 is a knock off of Swan 47 but at a fraction of the Swan's price. Same with Lien Hwa of Taiwan producing knock offs of Little Harbors.

Also, since many boats were custom ordered by their first buyers, you will often find a wide enough variations in layouts, systems and whatnot. And some models back in the 60s and 70s were sold as DIY or unfinished hulls/kits with the sellers capitalizing on the designer's name. These IMO are the most dangerous for the unwary buyer as it would be hard to trace the quality build and one boat may be very different from it's siblings as far as the quality of the finish, etc.

When I was researching the pedigree of my own first boat - a US27, initially the name of the designer came up is Stan Huntingford, a lesser known Canadian designer but with a few well known models such as Passport 42. Later it was asserted that the actual designer was much more well known Doug Peterson. And to add to the confusion the US Yachts builder was a sailing subsidiary of Bayliner, itself a producer of ugly ducklings under the name of Buccaneer. The two companies did not share in the design (USY being a better design and quality build) but USY suffered from the association with its ugly corporate sibling/parent. And more confusion resulted from the fact that US yachts had 3 facilities in US - one on each coast and one somewhere in Midwest. The one on West Coast was in the Bayliner plant and suffered all of the Bayliner faults - chopped mat, blisters, etc. The other two facilities actually produced pretty decent and sturdy boats, basically of Pearson quality, at least. I lucked out and had the "good" plant model for the price of unwanted Bayliner. But it also could've been the other way.

Interestingly enough, when US yachts was shut down by the Bayliner Pearson bought their 25-30ft molds and for a few years made hulls under their own name but named the models Triton, capitalizing on its famous 60s model name. But the two have nothing in common, except that name. Then the late 80s-early 90s economy killed many decent boat makers, Pearson among them. So today if you're looking at a late 80s Pearson 27 you know that you can get a virtually identical early-mid 80s US27 for a fraction of the Pearson's price.

[TooCoys]

Originally Posted by Island Time O25

So today if you're looking at a late 80s Pearson 27 you know that you can get a virtually identical early-mid 80s US27 for a fraction of the Pearson's price.

....hence my question! And a very good example of why I'm asking!

[Sailmonkey]

Originally Posted by TooCoys

....hence my question! And a very good example of why I'm asking!

The only way to gain this knowledge is to see a boat you like and begin to research its lineage.

[Sandero]

Learning the history of a design is surely interesting. Most designs of ANYTHING emerge from previous "art"... how could they not?

You need to research the designer of a boat and see their history... more important perhaps than who actually built the boats. After I bought Shiva I was very curious to learn about her "origins" and went to Holland to visit and tour the factory and spend time with the architect Dick Zaal at his home. It was one of my most treasured experiences.

[Suijin]

As noted by rbk, naval architects design boats and then yards build them, and often they do it for a third entity, the actual "brand" company. For example, Valiant contracted out the design of the V40 to Robert Perry, and then contracted out the manufacture of the boat to Uniflite, a large yard in Bellingham WA that built boats for other companies as well. Uniflite ultimately went out of business and production was moved to another yard in Texas. Throughout, "Valiant" was basically a sales and marketing company. Throughout the life of a brand, it might have used numerous architects and yards.

In addition, molds and designs get bought and sold as companies go out of business or discontinue manufacture of a given model. When Islander went out of business, Nordic bought a few of their molds and continued production of those boats under their own name, hence an Islander 34 of the mid-eighties is for all intents and purposes the same boat as a Nordic 34, with some differences in fitout and build.

I worked in the Seafarer factory as a teenager, building designs from a number of different designers. One was the Atlantic class, a 30' day sailor, which Seafarer was trying to resuscitate, originally designed in 1938 by Starling Burgess. Atlantics had been built by numerous yards around Long Island Sound for 40 years. Seafarer always seemed on the brink of insolvency, like many sail boat brands, as the market seesawed up and down, documentation was slim, and you'd be hard pressed these days to scrounge up a lot of information on the company much less the models that came and went from it's portfolio.

Add to this the fact that most yards are small, relatively speaking, and live tenuous lives financially, and you have two other factors that make tracing provenance difficult. Craftsmen come and go and quality can vary up and down. Documentation is slim because that's not what yards specialize in and they are too busy building boats and trying to survive. There's just not a lot of information that is preserved by the yards/companies themselves in the first place. Add to that fact that even production boats get customized to some extent or another during manufacture, without much accompanying documentation, and you make digging up information even more confusing.

[denverd0n]

The basic answer to why it's not like cars? Because in one year Ford turns out many, many times more cars than the total number of boats that O'Day built in the entire lifetime of the company.

In their first year Ford made more than 12,000 of the 1964-1/2 Mustangs. And, of course, that was a shortened production year. In 1965, the first full year of production, they made more than 370,000 of the hardtops, and if you add in the other models, almost 550,000 Mustangs in total.

O'Day was one of the most prolific of all American boat builders. They were in existence (in various forms) from 1958 until 1989. Their most popular boat was the O'Day Day Sailer. In that entire 31 year time span they built a little over 12,000 of them; comparable to Ford's first, abbreviated year of Mustangs.

The sailboat market is just absolutely MICROSCOPIC compared to the automobile market. That's why, for all practical purposes, you really cannot compare them in any way at all.

[a64pilot]

Sailboats and to some extent boats in general are somewhat of a niche manufacturing, that is they are small companies manufacturing very small quantities of boats, they change ownership pretty often and different owners have large swings in quality. It's not Sony for instance, a multi Billion dollar corporation that has been around and likely will stay around, like Ford or Chevy.

Once boats get a few years old, you know the good ones by what they are selling for, the older the boat, the more pronounced this becomes. A high quality build that is 40 yrs old is still worth some cash, a "pop" boat, be hard to give one away to stay out of the disposal fees.

However, especially as you get towards newer boats, some types are fashionable and if its a type that is in fashion to own, it will bring more than a better built boat that is of a type that is not so fashionable to own.

A clapped out Ford SUV will bring more than a mechanically perfect Volvo station wagon, just because its an SUV for instance, although the Volvo is likely a better vehicle and has been better maintained, but its not fashionable to drive a station wagon.

[Geek_Guy]

Why are sailboats so hard to follow, or learn? Its not like Ford or Chevy. You cant exactly trace the Mustang of sailboats back to a 1964 model. It also seems confusing because there is usually subsets of models within a manufacturers line.

Not sure it's really that different. Maybe different as you haven't spent as much time on the sailboats. As example take Hunter 37 (my lineage): First was the 37C (Cherubini)
Then the Legend 37
Then 37.5
Then I think 370
Those were all similar hull designs as far as I know. Though the 370 and Cherubini seemed to be some different.

For instance, because its all I know, there are Hunters, but then there are the Cherubini designed Hunters.

It also seems that there are only a few major brands of sail boats in the US, that "mass" produced boats. Off the top of my head I can think of Hunter, Catalina, Oday, McGregor, Pearson, and maybe a few others. The rest of what I read about seem to be short run makes with only a few models made.

Actually back in the 'day' there were hundreds of sailboat makers in the US. Admittedly they didn't make the quantity that those brands you mention did. I have a book that listed sailboats from the 60's 70's and it's maybe 2 inches thick.

How do you determine who is the "luxury" sedans and who is the "economy" cars of the sail boat world? And in the grand scheme of things, how much does a designers name play into things? Are the Cherubini Hunters better built than the Hunters of later years?

Not sure any of the brands you mention would be in the luxury sedan class. I believe most people would classify Hunter, Catalina, Oday, and Pearson as a chevy class. I would rank Macgregor as a Yugo. I think for a high end boat you'd be looking at a non production builder. I believe that most fiberglass boats were thicker in the 60's and 70's. Not necessarily because of better but more because they didn't have experience with the product and wanted to be sure it was stout enough.

[pcmm]

You need to read the book "Heart of glass"

https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Glass-F.../dp/0071435468

Pretty much covers the whole history.

Hunters as you probably already know have a terrible reputation (historically) for design and build quaility. sort of like the Chevy Cavalier! They got you started but man were you happy to get rid of it an move up to better quaiity!

They're pretty good now but still suffer from the slightly not pretty designs and the B&R rig that most people still can't ( or won't) wrap their minds around!

[Geek_Guy]

PCMM,

Wow that's pretty harsh, and I'd humbly point out that it's probably not accurate. Though there were some exemptions. I remember one model that was underbuilt and stressed. But would imagine most companies that have been in business for over 50 years have had a bad apple or two.

But just take the Legend series There are hundreds of them still in use some 30 years later. I don't know of many Cavaliers still on the road. Is it a fabulous boat, probably not. But still not bad looking and functional. I know there is a strong following with people for the Cheribini's. They are several years older but seem a strong solid boat.

My specific Hunter has cruised from Jacksonville FL, through the Panama canal to Alaska and back 3 times. Still a solid decent boat.

Dave