Bayfield sailboats: the production-line yard where Ted Gozzard's traditional lines began
Bayfield Boat Yard built full-keeled cruising sailboats in volume out of Ontario from 1970 into the late 1980s, nearly all of them designed by one man, Ted Gozzard, before he left to build a smaller yard under his own name. The clipper bow, wood trail boards, and traditional styling that would later define Gozzard's own boats first took shape here, on a production line capable of turning out more than a boat a week.
Origins and ownership
Ted Gozzard founded Bayfield Boat Yard in Ontario in the early 1970s, putting a 23-foot full-keeled sloop into production in 1970. Cruising World's history of Gozzard credits the founding to Ted and his brother Haydn; Canadian Boating's account instead describes Ted and partners developing the Bayfield 25 as the first boat in the range. What both agree on is the scale the yard reached: run as a production facility able to produce over a boat a week of any given model, Bayfield had delivered well over 1,500 full-keeled cruisers from 25 to 40 feet by the time Ted moved on.
Ted sold his shares in the company in 1979, according to both Gozzard's own account and Cruising World, though Canadian Boating instead dates his departure from the group to 1984, when he left to establish his own company. He went on to found his own yard, Gozzard Yachts, in Goderich, Ontario, to free himself from full-production encumbrances. Bayfield Boat Yard carried on without him, continuing to build the 32 and expanding to five models by the mid-1980s, including a 40-foot ketch, before hard times that hit many boatbuilders in the late 1980s brought the original company down — Sailing Magazine puts the closure in 1990, Canadian Boating in 1988. Afterward, a group of investors led by Tom Sutherland of Neptune Marine, a longtime Bayfield dealer in Whitby, Ontario, bought the molds to keep building the full range; Neptune Marine has since been dissolved, and the molds are now controlled by Sea Island Marine Services.
The designers
Ted Gozzard designed the entire Bayfield range with one exception: the Bayfield 36, whose lowered cabin profile Canadian Boating credits to his brother, Haydn Gozzard. Ted's own designs carried a signature look — a clipper bow, wood trail boards with scrollwork, and, on some models, additional wood trim and taffrails for a traditional appearance — that he said was influenced by the designs of L. Francis Herreshoff, the famed turn-of-the-century American boat designer.
Construction through the eras
Bayfield hulls were solid fiberglass, heavily laid up with mat and woven roving; decks were cored with 3/8-inch balsa, with plywood substituted in high-load areas. A thick fiberglass liner, or pan, stiffened the hull, encapsulated the bulkheads, and added a finished, cosmetic appeal throughout the range. The earliest boats were distinctive below the waterline, too: the first thirty or so were fitted with a Sperry-Vickers hydraulic drive, which Canadian Boating describes as the first production application of a hydraulic drive unit in North America.
Lines and generations
The range grew from that first 23-footer — which evolved into the Bayfield 25 — through the 29, up to the 30, and on to the 36 and the 40. The 30 was relabeled almost as soon as it launched: introduced in 1973, it became the "32" after U.S. dealers began measuring its overall length to include the clipper bow and the trail boards under the bowsprit, a name Gozzard accepted even though, in his words, "she was really a 30-foot boat." More than 300 were launched during its long production run. By the mid-1980s the yard was building five models, including a 40-foot ketch.
Who Bayfield is for
Bayfields have been called "affordable Gozzards," Sailing Magazine noted, pointing to the similarities between Gozzard's early designs built at Bayfield and his later work built at his own yard. That comparison is the clearest way to place Bayfield in the market: buyers get Ted Gozzard's traditional, full-keeled styling, built at production-line scale rather than the semi-custom pace he adopted afterward. It's a yard for sailors drawn to that traditional look and full-keel cruising manner, built in numbers a smaller custom shop could never match.
