M17 #375 – SWEET PEA

Jerry Montgomery has shared some ‘M-boat’ history –

M-17- # of boats made:

1973     7 boats

1974     44 boats

75           32 boats incl 2 flushdecks

76           44 boats incl 2 flushdecks

77           43 boats incl 4 flushdecks

78           19 boats incl 1 flushdeck

79 and 80- 42 boats

81           19 boats

82           20 boats

83           20 boats, slowly dropping after that.

(Note the big drop in 75 and 78- these were the two oil crises!  Note that production was reduced from one per week to one boat per two weeks; several of these years we shut down between Thanksgiving to New Year’s due to lack of business.   Interesting times.  (‘m astounded that we first started the 17 tooling in early Spring and shipped the first boat in October.  Impossible!  7 months!

That’s what happens when you have lots of good help working on tooling 40 hours a week, which was easy to come by in Costa Mesa in those days.  The big companies were laying off people).

M-15:   Started tooling in June 81, two of us made the plugs working nites and weekends, guys in the mold shop did most of the finishing and mold-making.  We finished the first boat Oct of the same year.  Again, amazing what lots of help can do.  5 months!

1980       11 boats

81           78 boats

82           41 boats

83           34 boats

84           38 boats

85           32 boats, slowly dropping after that.

Intereasting to note that the high point in national production was in 74, just before the first gas crunch.  The high in numbers of non-aux sailboats was 121K boats if my memory is correct, and by the mid 80’s it was below 10K.  Few of us were smart enough to figure out what was happening for years! (damn- looks like we’re having another bad year.  Maybe next year).  In the meantime builders were dropping like flies.

In Oct 83 I changed the port seat locker to like the 17; cut out the box for access into a bilge locker.  Way better, but cost more to build.  Decided to do that after my first crossing of the Gulf in a 15- because it became very obvious that the extra storage was worth its weight in gold.

Summer 85; # 335, Added 50 lbs of trim ballast forward, making total of 75, then changed 50 of that to a steel plate to make more room for those who wanted to install an elect pkg.

The notebook had sat in various boxes in various places for almost 30 years and is quite tattered and some of the info was indecipherable, but it beats my memory!  It’s been  quite a trip.

jerry