Olson sailboats: one Santa Cruz designer's ULDB line, built by more than one hand
George Olson designed five of the six sailboats that carry his name -- the 25, 29, 30, 34 and 40 -- ultralight racer-cruisers built in Santa Cruz, California, beginning in 1978. The Olson 30 Class Association's history of the man describes him as widely considered the father of the Santa Cruz ULDB (ultralight displacement boat) sailboats. The sixth model, the Olson 911S, came from a different hand entirely: naval architect Carl Schumacher renamed an earlier design of his own, the Capo 30, to join the line.
Origins and ownership
Olson's boatbuilding partnerships predate the Olson line itself. Years before any boat carried his name, Ron Moore rescued the mold of Olson's own boat Grendel from destruction, and a partnership between Olson and brothers Ron and John Moore grew out of it. Olson's design credits from that period reached beyond his own line, too -- he is also credited with the Moore 24 and the Santa Cruz 27, evidence of how far his hand extended through the region's ULDB scene.
Pacific Yachts -- formed as a partnership between Olson, Lyn Neale and Alan Wirtanen after an Olson 30 prototype netted 15 firm orders at the Long Beach Boat Show -- built many hundreds of boats to Olson's designs, including the Olson line itself. Practical Sailor's account of the same era calls the builder Pacific Boats instead, and refers to the marque as Olson Yachts; nothing ties the three names to one confirmed company, so none is assumed here. Its class association's history puts the close of Pacific Yachts in 1987; Practical Sailor puts the run under the Olson Yachts banner from 1978 to 1986, with a tally of five models that runs against the six models in the Olson line.
The Olson 34 is where the builder question mattered most. Pacific-built hull #1 was barely finished before the company ran into financial trouble, and the tooling -- not the company -- was sold to Ericson Yachts. Ericson's own marketing director said at the time that the goal was a faster, lower-priced boat than the Ericson 35. Ericson went on to build 37 Olson 34 units. A version of the same handoff touched the Olson 25, which was also built first by Pacific and later by Ericson.
The designers
Every Olson but one carries George Olson's own pen. His finest design, by his class association's own account, was the Olson 30, drawn in 1978. The Olson 34 came from a specific brief in Olson's own words: he said the boat was meant to fill a niche for a larger racer-cruiser, easy to sail, that could double as a family boat.
Carl Schumacher designed the exception. Both The Sailing Museum's Hall of Fame history and a Sailing World obituary credit him with the Olson 911S, tracing it back to the Capo 30, a Schumacher design of his own that was renamed to join the Olson line.
Construction through the eras
The Olson 30's hull and deck were vacuum-bagged fiberglass over a balsa core, and the builder claimed each finished hull came within 10 pounds of a standard weight.
The Olson 34 shows how far construction could drift within a single model. Its original build schedule called for a cored hull and deck, and only Pacific's hull #1 followed it; the 37 units Ericson later built off the same tooling used hand-laid, uncored fiberglass, producing a heavier boat than the design called for. Practical Sailor described the hull as a one-piece monocoque of mat and 18-ounce bi-directional glass and roving, with extra laminate in the high-stress areas, and the boat was sold new with a five-year guarantee against blistering. The Olson 25 followed a similar pattern: Pacific-built boats were lighter, with cored hulls and no headliner, while Ericson's later boats added a headliner and a different stanchion arrangement. On both models, the same name can describe two structurally different boats depending on which builder produced the hull.
Lines and generations
Six models make up the line, from the 25-footer up to the 40, with the Schumacher-designed 911S as the outlier. The Olson 30 was the line's signature boat and its first project, with 350 sold according to Practical Sailor; the Olson 25 followed to meet demand for a MORC racer/cruiser with creature comforts, and 250 were built. The Olson 40 carries its own offshore record: one, Notorious, was campaigned for seven years and more than 30,000 ocean miles without a structural or mechanical failure, taking its first overall finish in the 1989 TransPac, and an early owner bought hull #1 during the model's first production run and worked directly with Olson on the build. The Olson 34 has its own closed result -- sailed singlehanded by Bruce Nesbit from San Francisco to Hawaii, it finished second in division and fourth overall in the Singlehanded TransPac -- and an owner recalled that the Olson 34 named Ozone was one of the last boats Olson built himself. The 29 completes the lineup.
Who Olson is for
Buyers drawn to the Olson name want a single designer's purpose-built ULDB thinking, with a real offshore record behind it -- and the willingness to check, model by model, which builder actually stands behind any given hull.
