Selections from Heart of Glass by Daniel Spurr pages 141, 182-187
Spurr, Daniel
Heart of Glass: fiberglass boats and the men who made them
ISBN 0-07-157983-4
Copyright 2000 Daniel Spurr
Although Fred Coleman s Bounty II (see chapter 6), Yacht Constructor s Chinook
34 (chapter 6), and Ray Greene s New Horizons (see chapter 6) were the first
fiberglass production auxiliaries (the first two launched in 1956, the New
Horizons in 1957), and Pearson s 1959 Triton (see chapter 7) was the most
successful production auxiliary to that date, it was Columbia Yachts that
quickly grabbed the biggest fistful of market share and made yachting affordable
to the middle class.
Columbia was started by two young men, Richard V. Valdes and Maurice V.
Thrienen. Valdes was born in Los Angeles and graduated from the University of
California there in 1956. His partner, who was ten years older, served in the U.
S. Navy submarine service during World War II and, in 1957, began selling
fiberglass supplies to industry. Their company, formed in 1957, was called Glass
Marine Industries (earlier, Glass Laminates), and had plants in Costa Mesa,
California, and Portsmouth, Virginia. The latter occupied a 40,000-square-foot
facility that was opened in 1964 and was soon more than doubled to 100,000
square feet; the facility was expected to produce $5 million worth of boats by
the next year. The company had a hundred U. S. dealers to sell its line of
sailboats, as well as power cruisers called the Express 30, 36 and 42. Boats
were also sold to Europe, beginning with a licensing agreement in 1964 with
Pacific Marine of Goteburg, Sweden.
A late 1960s company document titled History of Columbia Yacht Corporation
spells out the key facts:
Columbia Yacht Corporation had its origin in 1960 when its current president,
Richard V. Valdes, founded a small company know as Glas Laminates near the
present site of Columbia s ultra-modern headquarters plant in Costa Mesa,
California. At the age of 25, and with $8,000 in borrowed money, he built
Columbia s predecessor company into a thriving business producing fiberglass
camper tops, shower stalls, and chemical toilets. The company s entry into the
sailboat business came in 1961 via the Islander 24, a model which generated
sufficient orders at the Los Angeles and Chicago Boat Shows to exhaust the
company s production capacity for the balance of the year. From this modest
beginning Columbia today enjoys the undisputed position of the largest sailboat
producer in the world.
In 1962 the complete tooling was acquired for the Columbia 29, a highly
successful model designed by Sparkman & Stevens. This fortuitous acquisition
later led to Columbia s corporate name and distinctive emblem.
To reduce freight charges and better serve customers on the East Coast, Columbia
Yacht Corporation opened its eastern plant in 1964. Situated on a nine-acre site
at the edge of Portsmouth, Virginia, the eastern arm of the company was soon
producing all of the Columbia models. One year later, Columbia was building the
largest production fiberglass sailboat in existence the Columbia 50 designed by
Bill Tripp and its phenomenal success, both in terms dollar sales and major race
wins, did much to solidify Columbia s position as Number One in the industry.
In 1967 Columbia became a subsidiary of the giant California based Whittaker
Corporation. With the added financial stability, coupled with the technical and
engineering resources of its new parent company, Columbia continued to
strengthen its position of leadership in the sailboat industry. The company
headquarters plant was moved to a 10-acre site in southern California s Irvine
Industrial complex, which to this day is probably the most modern, progressive,
and bet-equipped fiberglass boat building facility in the country.
Columbia recently embarked upon a successful kit-boat venture, producing
component parts for seven sailing models ranging in length for 22 to 57 feet
under the Sailcrafter Yachts Kits label. By appealing to the fast growing
owner/builder segment of the market, Columbia has significantly broadened its
appeal to the yachting public.
Columbia presently has one of the largest networks of foreign licensees of any
U. S. boatbuilder, Columbia models are now produced in Canada, Australia, Japan,
and Spain. Columbia s impressive record of race wins and its sizeable group of
satisfied and enthusiastic owners tells the rest of Columbia s history.
Interestingly, this document fails to mention Vince Lazzara who, in 1960, bought
controlling interest in Dick Valdes and Maurice Threinen s Glass Marine
Industries after selling AeroMarine to Grumman. Lazzara renamed the company
Columbia Yacht Corporation, after the America s Cup Twelve Meter. He bought the
molds of Charley Morgan s Sabre, which had nearly won the 1964 SORC. It became
the prototype of the Columbia 40, which sold well for the new company. And
Morgan s 28-foot Tiger Cub, which had been built essentially as one-offs, became
the Columbia 31.
Lazzara called Valdes and Threinen two good fiberglass boys in their early
twenties. My main contribution was financial and establishing the dealership
organization I became the distributor for the whole United States. But I was
also involved in manufacturing, models, some design I guess that s about it.
Columbia grew and produced new models each year, much like and automobile
manufacturer. In addition to Morgan s 40-footer, there was the 24-foot
Challenger and Columbia 24 (1963) that featured the same hull (the former had a
flush deck, the latter a conventional cabintop); the Columbia 26 and 29 (1963);
and the 32-foot 5.5 meter, an odd narrow boat that was later called the Sabre
but never really caught on. In following years, the company built the Columbia
22, designed by William Crealock, The Columbia 31 (1965); the Columbia
Contender; the Challenger; the Defender; the Columbia 38; the Constellation; the
Concord; the handsome Columbia 50 (1966), which originally sold for about
$50,000; the Columbia 21, 25, 28, and 36 (1968); the Columbia 57 (1969), the
largest boat they ever built; the Columbia 34, 39 and 43 (1970); the Columbia 52
(1971); the Columbia 45 motor-sailer (1974); and the Columbia T23, T26, 32, and
35 (1975).
Another line was started in 1969 called Coronado (founded by Catalina s Frank
Butler, see chapter 13), which used practically the same concept and execution
as the Columbias but looked different sort of like the difference between an
Oldsmobile and Buick. In the following years the company built a Coronado 23,
25, 27, 30, 34, and 41. Selected models were offered as Sailcrafter kits, which
gave people the chance to buy the hull, deck and as many other components as
they desired, stretching their costs over a period of years.
The principal designer behind most of these boats, including the flush-decked,
bubble-topped Columbia 26, 34, 43 and 50, was Bill Tripp. Born in 1920 on Long
Island, New York, Bill Tripp began drawing boats as a youth during a confinement
for strep throat. As a young man, he worked in Phillip Rhodes s office for two
years. Bill Robinson, former editor of Yachting magazine, described Tripp as
tall and gangling, with a shock of blond hair, a ready grin on a round face, and
brown eyes surrounded by smile crinkles.
During World War II, Tripp served in the U. S. Coast Guard s Offshore Patrol, in
which private yachts, often armed with no more than a machine gun, were
commandeered to search for German U-boats. Winters on the North Atlantic, where
hands lay bellow to the warmth of a fireplace while snow-filed gales blew all
about, was a classroom no school of yacht design could ever simulate.
After his service in the Hooligan Navy, he joined the prestigious firm of
Sparkman & Stevens; in 1952 he started his own practice. In 1957, Tripp s
Touche, a 48-foot flush-deck sloop built by the well-known yard of Abeking and
Rasmussen in Germany, compiled a good race record and gave its young designer a
boost in stature. His boats were then built of wood, but the allure of
fiberglass soon drew his attention. As noted in chapter 8, author Bill Robinson
said Tripp conducted his own experiments with the new material and gradually he
gained enough confidence to go ahead with plans for a 40-foot yawl. The
driveway test (see page 141) was given to the keel-centerboard Vitesse Class,
conceived by Van Breems International. Later it evolved into the Block Island
40, built by American Boatbuilding, later by Metalmast, and currently by Eric
Woods s Migrator Yachts in Wareham, Massachusetts. The Hinckley Bermuda 40 was a
further development of the Block Island 40, also designed by Tripp.
Columbia s Valdes said of his company in 1962, Glass Marine Industries, only in
the yacht building business since 1960, has rapidly attained a dominant position
in the industry through new engineering techniques and efficient production
methods, The company has demonstrated its ability to produce its own plugs and
molds that are setting a new standard of excellence in the industry.
One of the main reasons for the Columbia s popularity is use of outstanding
marine architects such as Sparkman & Stevens, Wirth Monroe (designer of the SORC
winner Comanche), Charles Morgan (designer of Paper Tiger), two-time SORC
winner), and Blaine Seeley, one of Newport s leading naval architects and
designer of the powerboat line.
When the Whittaker Corporation bought Columbia Yachts in 1967, Lazzara was
forced to sign a three-year, no-compete contract, but the agreement applied only
to certain kinds of boats. By then living in St. Petersburg, Florida, Lazzara
quickly established a new company called Sea Rover to build fiberglass
houseboats, which he sold two and a half years later to Apeco. Then, when Apeco
went bankrupt, he bought back the molds and resold them to a Kansan who produced
them under the name Holiday Mansion. In 1971, he formed Gulfstar. The first boat
it produced was a 36-foot motor-sailer. In 1973 it built the Gulfstar 41
center-cockpit sailboat and in the next year began private labeling boats for
others, including yachts for charter companies that included CSY, Bill Stevens,
the Moorings, La Vida, and Bahamas Yachting Services.
Gulfstar added motor yachts to the lineup in 1977 and ten years later, three
years after the sailboat market went to pot, ceased building sailboats
altogether. That same year, Gulfstar merged with motor yacht manufacturer Viking
to form Viking-Gulfstar.
Meanwhile, Whittaker had unloaded some of the Columbia molds to a Canadian
company called Aura in Huron Park, Ontario, in 1984. The sale was prompted, no
doubt, by the same slow market that convinced Lazzara to quit building
sailboats. Aura built only the latest Columbia designs the Columbia7.6, 8.7,
10.7, and the 35-footer designed by Australian America s Cup designer Alan Payne
(as well as the Hughes 35 and 40 it had picked up from Hughes Boat Works, a
division of North Start Yachts in the same Canadian city). But not for long. Its
last year was 1986.
The other Columbia molds were in different directions, including to P&M
Worldwide of Costa Mesa (later Worldcruiser Yachts), which tried selling a
number of discontinued models that reads like the membership of a hall of fame
for production fiberglass cruising sailboats; John Letcher s Aleutka 26, the
Westsail 32, the Ericson Cruising 36, the Westsail 39, and the lovely Columbia
50.
By the mid-1980s, the last reverberations of the Columbia name were silent. The
giant was dead, slain by the fickle boating business.