Additional Info About Various Board Boats


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Porpoise (was Mystery 5)
7-31-05 from Robin Bratton
I found some information about this boat. It was manufactured in the early 1960's by a company out of Holland, Michigan called Michigan Molded Fiberglass Plastics, Inc. The company also made a molded fiberglass boat called the Land & sea. The company went out of business after several years. there was an article on 1-5-2003 in the Holland Sentinel (HollandSentinel.com)regarding this company.
4-26-06 from Jan P.
Ok - here are photos from the original brochures for the Super Porpoise - the "Clonefish" - Shorty - your mystery #5, and also on your board boat guide without pictures. I think the unknown photo was the porpoise. What a relief to finally find some answers -- now if I could get my hands on a copy of the brochure to figure out some dimensions and also what some of the missing screw holes were for...
Thought you might be interested - these are from the Hope Archives in Michigan.
Jan

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Mystery 6
11-17-05 From Donnie Loveday: My name is Donnie and I purchased the boats that you show on your website to be barracudas. I'm not sure that they are really barracudas (hence the search to find the make). [shorty: I renamed them to Mystery 6]. They were described on ebay as barracudas because the only name anywhere on the boat is a faded picture of a barracuda on the sails along with the letter "T". There is no manufacturers markings on the hulls, or date or place of manufacture.

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Laser 2
6-28-05 Q - Shorty
From what I understand, that hull has been made by a couple of different companies and sold under a few names. Do you know much about the history of it's manufacture?

A - VanMan
Well, a little snippet anyway. The Laser 2 (which had quite a history prior to this) was consolidated under the Sunfish-Laser company by Peter Johnstone in the 90s. He bought the rights to manufacture the Zuma, sunfish, laser, laser2 and Daysailer dinghies and produced all these from a manufacturing facility in R.I. Eventually he developed a vision around the idea that sailing was too inaccessible to entry level sailors. It was an elitist sport and the entry level equipment was too difficult to attract novices.

Escape sailboats was born from the idea of an extremely easy sailboat, a board boat, to buy, own and sail. Peter developed the first Escape as the first rotomolded polyetheylene sailboat, with a very simple rig, designed by Gary Hoyt, an innovative sail and rig designer.

To launch Escape, Peter sold most of the Sunfish-Laser designs to Vanguard sailboats. The laser, laser 2, sunfish all went to Vanguard. The Daysailer went to a former manufacturer of that class in Rhode Island. In the process, he retained the rights to duplicate the Laser 2 hull form under a different name. This became one of the early Escape models in 97, the Expedition 14.5. Essentially a Laser 2 hull with the Gary Hoyt, Smart Rig. Likewise, the Zuma became the Escape 12.5 with a similar rig. Except for the Expeditions, the original Escape rotomolded boats had grey hulls and the Smart Rig.

Unfortunately, the Expeditions were a transitional boat. The market for a reletivley expensive to produce hull with a Smart Rig turned out to be quite limited and the Expedition 14.5 and 12.5 stopped production after about a year. They were replaced by an expanded lineup of rotomolded Escape designs (much cheaper to mass produce) of different lengths and rig variations. These hulls were very stable, easy to sail and very durable.

Eventually the Expedition rights went to Catalina, who sat on the designs for a year or 2 and then started producing them with a different rig yet again, with a different name.

Peter Johnstone sold Escape Sailboats to Johnson Outdoors, who moved the company to Michigan to combine with another small boat company they owned. The rotomolded hulls were produced somewhere else (Georgia I think) anyway - but Escape ceased to be a 'sailors' company.

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Squirrel
9-7-05 from Alex Afsari
Shorty, I salvaged the sail and mast [for PDRacer] from a sailboat that my Dad gave me for my birthday about 25 years ago. It is indeed a squirrel (it's actually a little embarassing). I have never seen another Squirrel boat since -- it was a plastic hull with a hollow core. It had the same shape and size as a Butterfly. It was very light and I learned a lot sailing for a couple of summers until the bottom developed a crack and we realized there was no way to repair it. So, my duck has a squirrel sail -- but I think if you squint and concentrate really hard, it looks more like a badger or a wolverine. Or at least a really tough, angry squirrel.

I will look to see if I can find a photo of the boat in the family archives. To the best of my knowledge, the boat had all of the same aspects of a Butterfly (LOA: 12 ft, Beam: 4 ft, 6 in.). The hull was white plastic, and probably weighed no more than 50 lbs. The rudder and dagger board were wood. There was an aluminum sleeve lining the dagger board trunk in the center of the boat, and the rudder attached to aluminum pintles (or is it gudgeons?) that were somehow attached to the stern. 2 piece aluminum mast, probably a total of 15 feet in height. Loose footed sail that slips over the mast. Maybe 75 sq. ft. of sail area. From what I recall (I was 10 at the time), the boat is best used as a pirate ship. If I can locate a photo, I will pass it along.

Alex

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