There has been a lot written about George O'Day. From a Dolphin 24 owners perspective he was the guy with the ideas that made the Dolphin 24 happen. Olin Stephens, Bill Shaw, Palmer Scott and others were critical to its birth but it was George O'Day who wanted a good junior ocean racer built in fiberglass that good sailors of modest means could afford - to race seriously, and to cruise with their families.

Dan Spurr, the author of the book Heart of Glass, Fiberglass Boats and the Men Who Built Them wrote an excellent article in 2002 for Good Old Boat magazine with the above title. I think it tells this man's story very well. With the permission of Dan and Karen Larson, Founder and Editor of the magazine, you can Click here to read the article.

In researching the web archives of Jim Huxford's old Dolphin 24 website we came across an excerpt from "Addicted to Sail" by Norris D. Hoyt. Norris and Kitty Hoyt had a Dolphin which they enjoyed for many years. Norris sailed on Bolero and other famous yachts with the Stephens brothers and is veteran of more than twenty transatlantic passages. He is recounting a meeting he had with George O'Day and Bob Baker whose name and work has often appeared in "Wooden Boat" An example of his skill with wooden boats is the Block Island Cowhorn which is now in the Mystic (Seaport) Museum. That excerpt is reprinted here.

The Very First Dolphins

From "Addicted To Sail" by Norris D. Hoyt

George O'Day called Bob Baker one day and asked him to come to his office, and to bring Norris Hoyt with him. George unrolled the plans for a twenty-four-foot keel centerboarder, the Dolphin, from Sparkman & Stephens. For a wonder, she was beautiful, even to Baker. She had a swing to the sheer, a tender bit of hollow in the bow, and a real personality -- not soap-dish anonymity, and not the sort of character-boat overstyling that looks like a cross between a movie pirate ship and an Adidas sneaker.

"Bob," George said, "There's a boat show in a week, and I need a model that shows the interior and exterior by then. Can you do it?"

"Gosh, George," Bob said, "in a week? I'd have to work nights!"

"Right! Then it's a bargain?"

"O.K."

"Alabama a minute," I said, "what's the fee?"

"How do I know until I see the boat and Bob knows how many hours it took."

I wondered why I was there, and soon found out. George had the idea that fiberglass hulls could be marketed with all the bits and pieces cut to fit at the factory, and the owner himself could do the expensive hand labor, thus preserving the profit and eliminating the Union. I was to buy a kit at cost from George, and rewrite his foreman's instructions to make the whole enterprise look like a piece of cake. We'd sell the instructions separately, possibly as a come-on. I said maybe. We drove home.

Four days later, after two phone calls from O'Day, who couldn't locate Bob for a progress report, Bob showed up in Newport, had a placid lunch without saying much, and then took me out to the car and showed me the model. He had gone to ground in Westport, taken the phone off the hook, and gotten hooked by the model to the extent that he only dozed now and then. It was, of course, more affection-generating than the real boat could ever be, with an elegant eggshell finish and all the wee handrails, footrails, hatches, and trim in varnished mahogany. The wooden mast was bright, wire rigging with tiny turnbuckles. There was a wee working compass in the bridge deck. The winches on the mast and cockpit were aluminum pushpins, filed exactly to appropriate size. The deckhouse lifted up with the mast, and there was the interior, also white and varnished mahogany. The whole thing was on a wood base chocked and blocked, as if it were in a boatyard. It was so great that I resolved then and there to have a real one.

We called George, parked again on Newbury Street (after three times around the crowded block). I carried the boat upstairs as reverently as The Holy Grail, set it on George's desk, and sat down. Bob lifted the deckhouse. George tried it himself, with the awe with which a bachelor touches a baby. "Christ" he said, "that's bea-oo-tiful!"

W. W. Norton, 1987, ISBN 0-393-03316-3

Webmaster Note: John Shumaker, the man who founded Yankee Yachts, told your webmaster the following little story. At the New York Boat Show in 1967 - Yankee's first show exhibiting the Dolphin - George O'Day walked up to the Yankee booth to congratulate him on the boat and wish him luck. Then he said to John pointing to the cove stripe "See those two dots up there behind the Dolphin. They are not dots - in the original molds they are the initials O and D"