There were 3 major builders of the Dolphin 24 - O’Day Corporation's subsidiary Marscot Plastics in Fall River, MA, Yankee Yachts in Inglewood, CA, and Pacific Dolphin in Anaheim, CA. In addition, O’Day/Marscot had at least 3 subcontractors, Lunn Laminates in Port Washington, NY, F.L. Tripp & Sons in Westport, MA, and J.C. Taylor & Sons in Toronto, CA.

At this point we do not know how hull numbers were assigned, and who assigned them. Simply using hull numbers, when we can actually determine one, can be misleading. For example, Yankee Yachts' founder built his first Dolphin from bare hull #71 provided by O'Day. He built a wood boat on that hull. She was his personal boat and he named it Yankee. Was this a Yankee (which did not actually exist at the time), or an O'Day Dolphin? Reading on you will find many more examples this problem. Hull numbers do not appear to be entirely reliable as the indicator of who built how many boats. Click here to see more about Nameplates and Builders Numbers

We have a letter from Ray Story about his Loki, Pacific Dolphin #277, in which he says he was told by one of the past owners of Pacific Dolphin that Loki was the last Dolphin. On the other hand we have Mike Zint's recently rediscovered Grand Finale which has Pacific Dolphin nameplate #300. We also have 4 other Pacific Dolphins with hull numbers higher than #277 that are listed in the Roster.  All these boats were built in 1977. Loki was Pacific Dolphin's show boat and might have been built earlier but may have been the last one sold? This little idiosyncrasy needs to be resolved, and we have our investigative reporters working on it.

Jay Picotte's Recovery was one of 4, perhaps 5, Dolphins, built by F.L. Tripp & Sons in Westport, MA - but Recovery does not appear to have a hull number. The Tripp boats were built from 'Kits" supplied by O"Day and were, probably, incorporated into the O'Day hull numbering system, but we do not know for sure.

Chris Vandersteen's Lezah was built by J.J. Taylor & Sons in Toronto, Canada and also does not appear to have a hull number. There are estimates that J.J Taylor built 10 -12 Dolphins. These boats were also built from 'Kits" supplied by O'Day so these boats may also be, or may not be, included in O'Day's numbering system.

One of the intriguing parts of the story is how many Dolphins were actually completely made by O'Day Corporation's arrangement with Marscot Plastics, which was originally owned by Palmer Scott, and eventually became an O'Day subsidiary. O'Day/Marscot's major sub contractor, Lunn Laminates built 25 according to its former Chief Engineer, Roy Berg. Its been reported that there were at least 22 "Kits" supplied to boat builders (Yankee, Tripp and J.C.Taylor, and perhaps others) and to private individuals - bare hulls and complete fiberglass shells, no interiors, sometimes with centerboards and rudders, and sometimes not.

O’Day considered the bare hulls they supplied to Yankee and others as "Kits". Sparkman & Stephens was collecting royalties on their Dolphin design based upon boats built but they had no record of boats built in their files - an over zealous effort to clean up their files years ago resulted in the loss of many of their Dolphin records. Royalties were sometimes a subject of some dispute between S&S and O’Day. In the S&S files was an exchange of letters regarding late payment of royalties and specifically mentioning the royalties due on the early boats Yankee built. To make this even more interesting, John Shumaker was finishing these boats using the Mermaid 24 plans he had purchased in 1962 from S&S directly. Those plans were originally bought for a personal boat he was going to build for himself. When this project evolved into building wood boats on O’Day supplied fiberglass hulls this became a matter of royalties due on the use of the Mermaid plans.

Based on your Webmaster's research to date, it seems that in 1960, 13 boats/hulls were built by O'Day at their Marscot Fall River, MA plant. Roy Berg, former chief engineer at Lunn Laminates, and himself the first owner of 'The Black Dolphin", recalls that the O'Day plant had a fire in 1960, that the tooling was shipped to Lunn who was contracted to build 25 boats in 1961. Lunn was a family owned, experienced, fiberglass laminate subcontractor who had made torpedo parts and periscope housings for the US Navy and who, incidently, built the tooling for and made the first 5 Seawinds - the start of a business that eventually became the Allied Boat Co. After the 25 boats were built we don't know where the Dolphin tooling went, presumably back to the O'Day plant.

Then, there is the question of the "O'Day plant" itself. The first boats were built by Marscot Plastics located in Fall River, MA for George O'Day and Associates, Inc. This is what the nameplate on Passage, hull #10 says. Maybe Marscot Plastics was actually an independent company at the time and later was acquired by O'Day? Or perhaps it was already an independent subsidiary. Other unverified information indicates that O'Day acquired Marscot Plastics in 1958 and moved it from New Bedford to Fall River.

In the "Dolphin" article section of Blanchard S. Fressenden's "The Sailboat Classes of North America", Doubleday, 1963, p252-253, there is a quotation attributed to US Yachts, Inc, Village Square, West port, CT- no individual's name given. US Yachts was owned by investors who were also some of the original investors in O'Day Corporation. US Yachts was reportedly formed for the specific purpose of selling the Dolphin and other early fiberglass sailboats. They were the sales agent for O'Day and actually sold the Dolphin 24.

"Fifty boats have been delivered and 10 are being built now to order for customers in the United States. Fifty per cent of the Dolphin owners use them solely as weekend cruisers, while the other fifty per cent are raced and cruised. We anticipate 40 new owners in 1962. Three boats have been built from kits and all are sailed from Southport, CT".

We know these particular 3 boats, Dick McCally's hull #11 Windsong, Phil Zerega's hull # 12 Teal - later Marionette - and Clark DuBois's hull #13 Teridot -a hull, deck and cabin shell.

In the S&S files is a November 27, 1963 letter to Lyman Bullard, CEO of O'Day from Bob Larson at US Yachts discussing, among other matters, the sales possibilities of the Dolphin out on the West Coast. US Yachts was the sales agent representing O' Day Corporation's Dolphins, and this included sales of Dolphins sub contract manufactured by Lunn Laminates, Tripp & Sons, and presumably J.C. Taylor & Sons in Canada. In that memo Bob Larson states the sales of the Dolphin to date, including boats already sold for 1964 delivery, as 70, of which 6 were in kit or unfinished form.

These sources, taken literally, put sales at 60 boats sold or on order through 1961, and 70+ through sometime in 1963.These numbers may include sales of kit boats to Canada or to other builders. It seems certain that the anticipated sales in 1962 of 40 boats to new owners did not materialize. There is support for the existence of sales problems in 1962, 1963 and 1964 based on other documents your webmaster saw in the S&S files - and there was rising S&S concern over this issue. It is not clear if these sales problems were due to O'Day's difficulties in manufacturing, or to actual sales problems. Roy Berg of Lunn laminates told your webmaster that people at O'day told him that they were not making any money on the Dolphin ("put at least $500 in each boat they delivered". Roy also said that was probably also true for Lunn and the boats they built. In a Jan 17, 1964 letter to Lyman Bullard, Rod Stephens states that only 5 Dolphins were sold in 1962 and only 6 in the first nine months of 1963.

Dyke Williams, who did some research on this subject for his Good Old Boat article, has an estimate of 60-100 built by O'Day and its sub contractors.The unofficial O' Day site (http://www.iheartodays.com/model_dolphin.html)  has an estimate of 36 - maybe does not include any Lunn built Dolphins? So for now, I think Dyke's 60 to 100 has the O'Day Dolphin sales bracketed - with about 75 being my comfort number. This section will be updated as new information arrives.

Yankee Yachts’ production appears to be better known. They built about 175 boats starting with their 4 kit boats built on O’Day hulls in 1964/65. It seems they used O’Day’s hull numbering system with their first kit boat hull # 71. The last boat Yankee built was hull # 248 in 1971/72.

Then, according to the Roster by Hull Number, there is a lapse of 4 years from 1972  thru 1975 when no boats were built. This is a mystery period and we need to find out more about what happened then. When Yankee Yachts went out of business in 1975, one of their suppliers ended up with the tooling and in 1976/1977 produced about 50 boats under the name of Pacific Dolphin, and then they too went out of business

So with #300 identified at the top end, a lot of supporting information from the Roster Section, and assuming that O'Day kept a progressive hull number system no matter who built boats for them, the following might be a reasonable recap of the number of boats built, by whom, and when.

	1960	61	62	63	64	65	66	67	68	69	70	71	72-75	76	77	Total
O'Day/Marscot	13	<<<<	<<<<	19	>>>>	>>>>	>>>>	0								32
Lunn	0	25	0	0	0	0	0	0								25
F.L.Tripp	0	0	0	0	0	5	0	0								5
J.C.Taylor	1	<<<<	<<<<	11	>>>>	>>>>	>>>>	0								12
O'Day	14	<<<<	<<<<	60	>>>>	>>>>	>>>>	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	74
Yankee Yachts	0	0	0	0	0	2	2	8	24	27	59	53	0	0	0	175
Pacific Dolphin	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	35	15	50
Total	14	<<<<	<<<<	65	>>>>	>>>>	>>>>	8	24	27	59	52	0	35	15	299