From 1969 until 1995 I owned and operated Montgomery Marine Products, primarily a manufacturer of sailboats featuring the excellent MONTGOMERY line, consisting of the MONTGOMERY 23, MONTGOMERY 17, MONTGOMERY 15, as well as the MONTGOMERY dinghies. During this time I made about 20 of the 23’s, about 500 each of the 17’s and 15’s, and several thousand of the dinghies. I also made the MONTGOMERY 12, which is a great little sloop designed by Lyle Hess for yacht club racing, and the MONTGOMERY 10. The M10 won most of the honors at Yacht Racing magazine’s America’s Teacup Trials in 1970 (Which was where the Laser and the Hobie 14 were introduced), and won the only perfect score in quality of the 49 entries. There is an Montgomery owner’s group, with archives and an e-mail forum, and an active Facebook group that might be of interest to you, dealing with the larger of these boats .
I also dabbled in canoes, both conventional (“real canoes”) and polynesian-type outrigger canoes, and all were of my design except for the 6-person outriggers that I made from a Tahitian design for the World Sprint Championships in 1992. It’s also a point of considerable pride to me that I stroked the team that took a 1st in the 500 meters and a 3rd in the 1,000 meters. Those were the days.
In 1995 I ended a 26-year marriage and decided that building boats, with the problems of a bunch of employees, was just not fun anymore, and sold the tooling to various companies. Since then I mostly make my living designing and tooling racing kayaks and outrigger canoes for an upcoming Sacramento company (Huki Outrigger Canoes), making the laminated wood parts for a popular three-man sailing outrigger canoe (Holopuni.com), and making rigging components for sailboats. Both of these companies are owned by good friends. Things could be worse. If you have several hours to spare take a look at these two sites (there’s a whole ‘nother world out there), but the purpose of this website is to promote and describe my rigging services.
In 2009 and 2010 I designed and built the molds for the new Sage 17, now built in Golden, CO, which is a stiff, great handling trailerable that is sweeping the trailerable sailboat races. It’s a great improvement on my earlier Montgomery 17. See the SAGE 17 section below!
Inspection of Standing Rigging
CLICK HERE for how to inspect your Montgomery’s standing rigging
Measurement of Standing Rigging
CLICK HERE for how to measure your Montgomery’s standing rigging.
Sage 17, 15 and SageCat
In late 2009 I started my first pocket cruiser design in 15 years, the Sage 17 for Sage Marine. I consider the Sage 17 to be a distinct improvement of my prior pocket cruisers: the significant use of carbon fiber makes her lighter and stronger which means better performance and lower towing weight.
A few years later I designed the Sage 15 and SageCat (the catboat rigged version of the Sage 15).
You can read more about Sage sailboats on the Sage Marine world-wide-web site –
M17 #375 - SWEET PEA 