DaySailer.org Forum

Howdy.
The wife and I just bought a new to us ds1 and drug it down to her new home in matacumbia. Builder plate says "made by marscot plastics for oday associates. "
Hull # 2397
Class # 227
What have I got? My best guess is 66 but I see a few 66 boats that have fiberglass seats.


500 bucks got us boat that needs some love, pretty crisp rolly tasker sails, a good solid trailer and a 3.5 hp outboard.
Found this board doing research and just wanted to say thanks. A lot of good helpful info here. Ok am sure I will have some questions for you guys after tarpon season when I start restoring her.

Selah!

Are you sure this isn't a Rhodes 19?

I put a tape on her and she is 17 feet. I am certainly no expert on the subject but it looks very similar to the other ds1's I have seen pictures of.
The seller had her listed on craigslist as a 1970 daysailer so I am
mostly operating on that information.

This is definitely an early Daysailer 1. I would guess around 1958 or 1959. We have a similar boat at our sailing club.

Is it just me, or does the mast look short? Or the boom too long?

The mast appears to be 5 or 6 feet short. The boom looks correct.

Wow... If she is that old, she is in pretty good shape! My charter cancelled today (too windy)
So I am going to start pulling the wood out of her today.

I set her all up and raised the sails and it is all there and seems pretty good to go.
The rigging is a hot mess but I think I could take her out today if I wanted to.
Right now she is rigged with a mid boom traveller but there are 6 blocks screwed to the stern deck with what appear to be attachment points for two more. Somebody in her past was a jam cleat junkie, they are everywhere.

She has two jib travelers on the cuddy top and two on the gunwhales.

I think she is set up for a spinnaker but I have no experience with one.

We are really excited about this little boat. She is going to see a lot of duty as a free ride out to the reef for spear fishing and bottom fishing so I would like to declutter the cockpit as much as possible. I think I am going to take the traveler out and put a mid boom ratchet block on the trunk so I can keep the back deck clear. Topping lift and lazy jacks are on the list as well. It is going to be nice to not have to pump a boat full of expensive gas if we want to go grab some lobsters for supper.
Thanks again for providing a great resource on these neat little boats.
Gonna go measure my mast.

Rummel wrote:I put a tape on her and she is 17 feet. I am certainly no expert on the subject but it looks very similar to the other ds1's I have seen pictures of.
The seller had her listed on craigslist as a 1970 daysailer so I am
mostly operating on that information.

Ah, looked bigger in the pictures and the wooden seats give a different aspect the to the interior, making it look bigger and wider...

Now for the famous 1970 date:

I have formed a hypothesis that the state registration scheme must have started around that time and that any older DS boats are more likely than not entered with a default date, which would have then corresponded to the earliest date the registration scheme existed. This, not accidentally, coincides with the occasion of the introduction of the modern HIN. (Or perhaps the move to a computerized system, if they had manual registers before).

Older boats would not have an HIN, which has a standardized way to encode the year of manufacture and stricter rules about the number of places that ID number had to be present on the boat. Older boats just had a brass or aluminum plaque that (not infrequently) was lost (or removed).

If my hypothesis is right, then, any boat for which the paperwork says 1970 or 1971 could be anything from 1959 to that date (after that, the HIN would encode the year).

Anyway, check out the threads on "DS1 design changes", and the "Unofficial official...list".

Since I have a Rhodes 19, I could tell right away it wasn't one. It does appear to be an easrly DS as previously stated. I have seen a very early DS with the wood seats. The mast does appear to be shorter than normal. Have you measured it? Does it have a hinged mast? It looks like it from the picture.

John

In reexamining the pictures, I now see that part of the mast is hidden by the trees. The height now looks normal for a Daysailer.

Commenting on the main sheet system, I would get rid of the amidships traveler. I've banged my shins more times on those dam things. On all my boats I use mid boom sheeting using a swivel mounted to the centerboard trunk. Stern travelers work well when set up properly, but I don't like the extra clutter they create. I race one of my Daysailers and found it just as competitive as boats with aft travelers.

I measured the mast and it is within an inch of spec length. It has been cut and fitted with a tabernacle. It also has a very well done weld between the tabernacle/hinge and the cuddy top.

The boat belonged to the uncle of the guy I bought it from. I just got his number, hopefully he can give me some background info.

Good to hear I am on the right track by taking out the main traveler. It is a pretty nice set up but I don't like it.

Duh, the galvanized trailer alone is worth the $500 asking price and a three digit Classic O'Day with what appears to be an old tapered Proctor Mast and oval Proctor Boom for free! You could sell the 3.5hp outboard and it's almost free!
A little rough around the edges but so would most of us if we lived outdoors 24/7 for the past 50-60 years.
Just a little TLC, new paint inside/out, new rigging, a new suit of Dieball Sailing sails and you'll have a DS NACR's competitive DS.
If you take a straight edge to the main halyard being used as a topping lift at the end of the boom the mast appears proportional but the top 20%+/- is either shaded or hidden by the surrounding trees and simply disappears.

I talked to the po of my boat last night. He is 65 and said his dad bought the boat new sometime in the late 50 or early 60s. He couldn't remember. His father gave the boat to him in 1970. His brother had a place in Matlatcha and he trailered it down and left it on a mooring in Pine island sound. He would spend a couple of weeks every year sailing her around Pine Island Sound area with occasional trips down here to the keys.
He told me a bunch of great stories about all the fun he had in her. He said he has sailed all his life and has owned at least 15 different boats in that time from dingys to a 42' cataraman. He said that he had more fun sailing this boat than all of his others combined.
Health problems forced him to stop sailing so he had his nephew go get the boat and take it back to Dania beach where it sat unloved for several years because his nephew is "too damn lazy for sailing, he likes those stupid jet skis".

He was very happy to hear she had gone to a good home down here in the keys and is sending the spinnaker for free!
He also told me to open the starboard tank inspection port and look in there. I found a very old bag containing a green leafy substance. Glad I didn't get pulled over and searched on my way home!

I did chuckle… Special flotation in the starboard tank.

Some places nowadays you can get into trouble for green leafy substances that are caught on the hull and trailer....while the green leafy stuff (out of sight) isn't an issue. Progress?