Potters and Guppys and Sparrows (Oh My!)

I recently became the proud owner of a Sparrow 16 “pocket cruiser”, circa 1981 (“QT”, hull #87). I discovered that “QT” had a pedigree, albeit a bit murky. A design by the well-known Herb Stewart, thus kissing cousin to the famous West Wight Potter, sounded like a peachy side benefit to a “craigslist special” starter boat. But the fragmentary information available online didn’t all add up. The following trivia will be of absolutely no interest except perhaps to a few folks who care about somewhat niche-y class of boat.

With some digging, I got the real scoop: the Sparrow 16, built by Northshore Marine, in fact originated as the Melen Marine Guppy 16, and has no connection to HMS or International Marine. And it is not a Herb Stewart design at all! Rather, it was designed by the even more prolific Ron Holder (Holder/Hobie 12/14, Holder/Vagabond 17, Holder 20, etc.). Heretofore I had seen no hint of a Holder connection to the Sparrow family, but I have it from the horses’ mouths: the founder of Northshore Marine, and Ron Holder himself.

The first clue came last week when I made my first-ever boat show visit here in Seattle – my recent purchase used having innoculated me against all the “boat show special” deals on new boats. Chatting with the International Marine rep, he mentioned that a fellow had stopped by the day before and said he was the guy that built the Sparrows up in Bothell, and had some interesting stories. Unfortunately he didn’t remember his name! Web searching didn’t pan out. But I had the wacky idea to test out my local Seattle Library’s research services. 2 days after asking “do you have any records of a Northshore Marine in Bothell circa 1981?” I not only had a DBA name but two possible local matches. This afternoon I finally connected by phone with Chuck Gaylord, original owner of Northshore Marine.

A forthright and cheerful man, Chuck happily dished out a number of revelations. First, according to Chuck, the Melen-built Guppy 13 was an outright rip-off of the Herb Stewart designed Sparrow 12 which Chuck later legitimately licensed from Herb’s HMS, the original builder. The owner of Melen Marine (who had been a close friend of Herb’s) apparently ordered hull #3 of the HMS-built Sparrow/Guppy 12, without windows or cutouts. Then Melen did a “splash off” – industry lingo for an illicit mold, made from a fiberglass boat turned upside down and standing in for the wooden “plug” of an original design. Melen changed just a few cosmetics – moving the mast forward, putting a bit more curve in the keel. According to Chuck, this escalated into a legal dispute, with courts ultimately ruling in favor of Melen.

So by the time Melen wanted a larger boat in the product line, Herb Stewart as designer was definitely not an option. Instead Melen hired Ron Holder, who had already come to some fame with his Vagabond 17, to create what was initially the Guppy 16. Only 4 Guppy 16’s were built before Melen went bankrupt, and Chuck was able to acquire the molds. The renamed Sparrow 16 became Northshore Marine’s best-selling boat, with over 150 sold (vs. about 50 Sparrow 12’s). Chuck sold the business around 1982 to his son, and then it was sold a couple more times. During this time Northshore Marine was also a West Wight Potter dealer, thus the shoal-keel Sparrows complemented the WWP15 and WWP19. According to Chuck both Sparrows (12 and 16) were relatively speedy, able to outsail P19s and even San Juan 21s on occasion.

Some further Sparrow 16 details from Chuck: there is foam flotation built-in to the bow, which unlike the flotation next to the cockpit seats is glassed-in and thus not visible. As a result Sparrows should be unsinkable: Chuck says he repurchased #25 holed and awash with water in its mooring, but it was well afloat with water only barely over the cockpit seats. The integral shoal keel has lead ballast with concrete over it, 350 pounds of ballast (although Ron Holder had spec’d 250 pounds), biased towards the bow to offset weight of crew in the cockpit. 4 layers of fiberglass roving were added to cover and isolate the keelhole, because Chuck had seen a boat nearly sink in the San Juan’s after a keel grounding. In general the Sparrows were significantly hardier (and heavier) than the contemporaneous Potters, which were lightly built, with only 2 mats and a cloth making a hull only 1/8 inch thick, whereas the Sparrow 16 was more like 3/8 inch. The S16 was also all glass, with no balsa or other wood. This is consistent with QT, which after 25 years is still firm on deck and cabin roof.

 
I had no reason to doubt Chuck’s story and scrutinizing Web photos of Guppy 16s and Sparrow 16s it was evident that they were essentially identical, with only the cosmetic change of the Guppy having 3 small round cabin portholes vs. the Sparrow 16’s two larger oval windows. But I was able to track down current info for Ron Holder, now a high-tech executive in the LED lighting business. He confirmed the essentials of Chuck’s story. Since the Vagabond 17 is round-hulled and very unlike the Sparrow 16, which has the hard chine and high freeboard typical of the Potters, I asked Ron whether there had been a request from Melen for a “family resemblence” to the Stewart-designed Sparrow12/Guppy13. Ron demurred, noting that several of his other designs, including the International 16 and Panther, had been hard-chine and that he had decided on hard chine in order to create a stable shoal-keel configuration (the swing-keel Vagabond which had more inherent keel-length stability, didn’t require the hard chine). Ron noted that he had also designed the Guppy/Sparrow 17, a similar design but with a longer cockpit and minimal cuddy cabin. He remembered some other details about the Sparrow 16, including the relatively small jib which he said was intentional to give it better sailing character.

So that’s it then: a minor bit of sailboat design arcana. I guess a better title would have been “Guppies and Sparrows and … Holders!? (Oh My!)”. Ron expressed some regrets at having been pushed out of boat designing courtesy of a noncompete in conjunction with selling his company to Coleman/Hobie (but doesn’t miss the bondo). Chuck is still a pocket cruiser aficionado, presently refitting an original Herb Stewart-built HMS 18 (later the Potter 19). I hope to run into Chuck in the Gulf Islands this summer.