navahoIII wrote:It looks like some of the DSIs have name plates (on the transom coaming) with O'Day...Fall River, MA and others have O'Day...Boston, MA. Ours (a 1961) has Boston. Is Fall River later?
Should we add a column?
O'DAY boats were built in New Bedford, MA by MARSCOT Plastics at first, (about 1958-63?) Around 1959-60 Marscot merged with Beetle Boats (NOT Beetle CAT) to become American Boatbuilding, soon after George O'DAY was forced to build his own factory to build his company's boats and that operation was based in Fall River, MA. Prior to that, the OFFICES of O'DAY Boats were in Boston, MA (ironically, on Newbury ST...... now a HIGH-priced shopping district!). So, if your ID plate reads "Boston" the boat was built prior to the Fall River Plant coming on-line, and the boat was most likely built by Marscot for O'DAY (early boats actually list Marscot as the builder).
One more interesting bit of trivia.... when Beetle and Marscot merged, I think Mr Beetle (John Beetle, son of the catboat builder) or his descendants, left to form a new company building fiberglass items for other uses, like chemical tanks/vats, and possibly doing some contract molding for small companies building boats. The last known location for that company was right at the entrance to the Fall River Industrial Park, where O'DAY had their Airport Rd. factory. Original O'Day factory in Fall River was at 165 Stevens ST, near the RT 195 - RT 24 junction.
O'DAY did keep pretty good records of how many DAY SAILERs they built at first........ and unfortunately, when O'DAY went bankrupt in 1989, no one was able to save all of the records..... some data is available through D&R Marine (Rudy Nickerson), but not much.