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The World According To |
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The World According To |
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In Bill Shaw’s Opinion . . . When asked to name his favorite Pearson design, his answer is invariably, "The next one . . .always the next one. In general, I liked the boats that were built in the late Sixties and early Seventies. They were a good compromise between the racing side of the picture and the cruising side, and they did both reasonably well. If any models exemplify that era, they would have to be the Pearson 35 (built in 1967), the 10 meter, the 36 and the 39." Bill added that, "Pearson’s ad director Tom Hazelhurst came up with the slogan ‘When you want to go racing, all you have to do is change the crew." "Today, there’s a genuine split between the two designs, with boats very much dedicated to racing and boats defined as cruiser-racers. But that sometimes is only as far as the print goes." On new technology: "When I first joined Pearson, a salesman from Owens-Corning told me, ‘you really should think about lightening up on your laminates, because that’s what your competitors are doing.’ He went away disappointed, since we didn’t take to that notion at all. About six months later, he returned and said, ‘Remember that conversation we had? Well, don’t do it. The others are having real troubles.’" Bill and Pearson Yachts refused to buy into the change despite the possible initial cost savings it might have generated. Fiberglass was in an embryo stage then and they simply wouldn’t alter a proven formula without proof that it would improve the product. "I inherited my philosophy as a result of the work that Everett Pearson had done," said Bill. "He worked closely with W.R. Grace and did a lot of testing on a lot of laminates—so he knew what he was doing when it came to building boats. As the technology advanced over the years, we would deviate to use materials that had better qualities. But the fundamental approach to calculating what the hull needed, what the deck needed, and the secondary bonding that was needed, never changed." |