Laguna sailboats: a single Anaheim yard behind two names
Laguna Yachts built sailboats in Anaheim, California, beginning in 1973, when founder Bill Downing launched the company with the Windrose 24. For its first years the yard sold its boats under the Windrose name; in 1980 it renamed its entire model line Laguna, so a boat sold as a Windrose before that year and one sold as a Laguna afterward can be the same design under two different badges. Every boat the company built, Windrose or Laguna, came from a single naval architect, W. Shad Turner.
Origins and ownership
By 1979 Laguna Yachts had also acquired Coastal Recreation, builder of the Aquarius and Balboa trailer-sailer lines -- though Small Craft Advisor's account of the same period runs the other way, describing Laguna as having "eventually incorporated as Coastal Recreation." Downing's original ownership carried the company through the 1980 Windrose-to-Laguna rename and on to 1986, when it was sold. The new owners lasted only a year before selling again in 1987, at which point the company ceased doing business as Laguna Yachts. Production then relocated to Chanute, Kansas, continuing under the name Capital Yachts until it closed in 1995. Only one model made that move: the Laguna 26, carried over and renamed the Classic 26.
The designers
W. Shad Turner designed every Windrose and Laguna boat the company built, part of a catalog that, by his own account, spans "the definitive companies" of the West Coast trailer-sailer era -- Santana, Windrose, Lancer, Balboa, Laguna, and Schock. A consistent thread runs through his work: raked bows, reverse transoms, and conservative sheerlines. Turner said he and his peers were using NACA foil sections "when almost nobody else was," and his Santana 20 was among the first true high-performance keelboats, helping give rise to the sport-boat category. He designed the Windrose 18 specifically for what he called the "start-up market" -- a trailerable boat meant to sail efficiently and be reasonably easy to build.
Construction through the eras
Downing insisted on hand-layup fiberglass construction and refused to use cheaper methods such as the chopper gun. Hulls carried an integrally-molded, encapsulated keel design, and Downing said no major keel issues were ever reported to the company. In 1979 the yard built a new production facility in nearby Stanton, California, around the same period Turner said he and his design peers aimed to keep their boat toolings "as modern as possible."
Lines and generations
The Windrose 18, one of Turner's smallest designs, was in production from roughly 1974 to 1980. In the early 1980s, after the Laguna rename, Turner and Coastal Recreation released an updated Windrose 5.5 with an extra foot of beam and a shallow, fixed lead keel, though the earlier swing-keel version had been built in far greater numbers. At the other end of the range, only around 40 hulls of the Laguna 30 were built.
Who Laguna is for
Laguna suits a buyer drawn to Turner's West Coast trailer-sailer and cruiser lineage -- boats built in small numbers by a single Anaheim yard through a compressed, name-changing production run, and connected by one designer's hand to the era's other defining builders.
