Bill Shaw was a young designer who started working for S&S in 1952, leaving in the early 1960's. He had a major influence on the Dolphin 24. Bill, shown here in a picture that appeared in Soundings magazine, passed away in 2006. Webmaster note: Bill's passing was one of the reasons I decided to do the website - these guys were leaving us and were taking a large part of the Dolphin story with them!   Bill Shaw had a remarkable career and after his time with S&S went on to become chief designer of Pearson Yachts in 1964, and later their long time general manager, retiring in 1991.

In the 1950's, S&S was the recognized expert in the Cruising Class of America Racing Rules (CCA). This rule appealed to owners who cruised their yachts off shore as well as raced. It encouraged and rewarded seaworthy and seakindly boats with shorter masts and longer booms that kept the center of effort and heeling moment down. Accommodations below were rewarded, stripped out hulls were penalized.

The Midget Ocean Racing Club (MORC) was formed in the mid 1950's and Bill Shaw was one of its founding members. MORC was developed for small offshore racing boats up to 24', later raised to 30', and it was based on the CCA rule. Bill Shaw was the lead designer at S&S working on this Rule. In an after hours project Bill designed his Shaw 24 to the MORC rule and later said of her " I did a half-size prototype of Finisterre, just to test the principles."

This is Finisterre

To understand why Bill selected Finisterre as the model for his Shaw 24 click on her name. The reader might note that both boats are centerboard yawls. The racing rules of the 1950's favored sea kindly boats with less heeling - shorter masts and longer booms. To encourage these factors a mizzen's sail area was rated at 50%. Many cruising sailors liked this arrangement as sailing in a breeze under 'jib and jigger' made life easier. Finisterre was designed by S&S for Carleton Mitchell, who passed away in July this year at the age of 96. Sounding's Magazine's October, 2007 issue has a great article about Carleton written by Senior Writer Doug Campbell. With the permission of Soundings Publications, LLC it is reprinted here. The photos are from the Mystic Seaport Carleton Mitchell Collection. Click here to go to the article.

This is Trina

The owner of the first Shaw 24 built was Bill Scranton and he named her Trina. After her launching she had, (like Finesterre) an exceptional racing record under not just the MORC rule but CCA and others. This attracted the attention of many, including George O'Day, an avid racer with a marketing concept to build affordable racing/cruising sailboats for " Sailboat Living" - the slogan that O'Day used successfully to build that company to one of the largest sailboat builders in the US.

Bill also had a hand in S&S's first design for fiberglass production - the New Horizon 26 - which was commissioned by Ray Greene, a mid west builder and an early fiberglass pioneer and promoter of using fiberglass in boats. This was a controversial circa 1957/58 project within S&S that seemed to focus more expanding the use of low cost fiberglass production as its hallmark - it had fiberglass davits for its fiberglass dinghy, and below had most of its accommodations made of fiberglass - not wood.

The 'Birth Certificate" of the Dolphin 24 refers to a design objective as a "modified Trina - New Horizons type", so an understanding of how the Dolphin 24 evolved depends on the role of the New Horizons 26 as well as the Shaw 24. Issues such as S&S's traditional vigorous inspections of builders - not always welcomed by builders, the new challenges of fiberglass production technology with its ability to produce parts and complete boats rapidly, the still uncertain reliability of fiberglass production technology, new ways of marketing mass produced sailboats, etc., were not readily resolved. Additionally, S&S, with Bill as the lead designer, designed the Tartan 27 in 1961 which became very successful. This was the boat which Ray Greene said essentially stopped sales of the New Horizons 26.

One of the interesting long running sagas is how Bill Shaw and Olin Stephens would meet at various events over the years and the conversation would inevitably turn to the relative merits of the Shaw 24, the Dolphin 24 and the Tarten 27. This happened again at the transom of my boat at the 2001 Designers Rendezvous at Mystic Seaport, Mystic, CT. This took place with boats like Brilliant, Bolero, Columbia, Courageous, Cyane, Palawan and other famous S&S boats al around and still on their inspection route.

Marionette was there as a representative of the Dolphin 24 Class and long time owner and author Dyke Williams was there with his Trina. After a discussion near Trina who was on her trailer nearby - and which discussion I missed (!#xx!&!) - the 3 of them came over to Marionette and true to form, the friendly rivalry continued with me straining for every word. This was relatively early in my Dolphin education. The Tarten 27 was plainly in view. I had previously seen, and admired Trina, but the parting words from Olin as they turned to walk away that I remember were

  "I always liked the Dolphin's lines".

In his Good Old Boat Magazine article on Dolphins Dyke Williams had a picture of Bill Shaw standing on a ladder looking over Trina's starboard quarter between the end of her boom and her mizzen. It was taken at the this same S&S Designer's Rendezvous at Mystic Seaport in 2001. That picture is below.