Precision sailboats: a family-run trailerable line built around one designer
Precision Boat Works spent essentially its entire history as a small, family-run builder: two brothers owned and operated the company from its 1978 founding until its 2018 closure, and for most of that run, one naval architect drew nearly everything in the catalog. That combination — one owning family, one primary designer, and a narrow, consistent size range of 13-to-28-foot family monohulls — gives Precision an unusually tight design lineage for a builder that stayed in business for four decades.
Origins and ownership
Richard and Bill Porter founded Precision Boat Works in 1978 and owned and operated the company themselves for 40 years, building out of Palmetto, Florida. By its own account, Precision considered itself one of the oldest family-owned sailboat builders in the United States and Canada, and the company said it had outlasted more than 110 other small sailboat builders in its 13-to-28-foot family monohull size class. Its workforce, per the company, collectively carried more than 150 years of Precision boatbuilding experience, and the operation also had a background in tooling, having built numerous plugs and molds — including one for a 100-foot sailboat hull — for other power and sail manufacturers.
Trade press reported that the Porter brothers decided to retire from building boats, and Precision ceased production in August 2018, having built nearly 5,000 sailboats from 13 to 28 feet since 1978. Bill Porter continued to offer replacement parts for existing Precision owners afterward, moving that operation to Sarasota, Florida.
The designers
Jim Taylor of Marblehead, Massachusetts, was Precision's designer of choice for its current sailboat line, an association the builder credited as a key differentiator from other small sailboat builders. Taylor's own design background spanned everything from 12-foot boats to America's Cup programs; Precision's materials credit him as a six-time Boat of the Year-winning designer, an award presented annually by Cruising World and Sailing World magazines, and note he was also known for his work on the Sabre Yachts line and as one of New England's leading custom race boat designers. Taylor's own site dates the partnership to the Precision 18 in 1984, running through to the end of Precision's new-boat production.
A different naval architect, Stephen R. Seaton, is credited with the smaller Precision 14 dinghy in the mid-1980s — a separate design lineage from Taylor's trailerable cruising line rather than part of it. Taylor was also involved, alongside Precision, in one boat built outside the standard Precision line: the Colgate 26, created as a trainer for Steve Colgate's Offshore Sailing School through a collaboration between Steve and Doris Colgate on concept, Taylor on design detailing, and Precision on tooling and construction. Precision built the Colgate 26 under contract for Colgate rather than as a Precision-branded model, and the boat was later produced by Waterline Systems rather than Precision; it saw use by hundreds of private owners as well as more than 40 boats at the US Naval Academy and US Coast Guard Academy.
Construction through the eras
Precision's hulls and decks were, across the line, hand-laminated fiberglass construction. Most of the catalog carried cast lead ballast, and the specific keel arrangement varied by model: centerboards on the 15 and 185, a fixed lead shoal keel on the 165, and a shoal keel paired with a centerboard on the 18, 21, and 23. On models built to that recipe, outer skins were laid up in vinylester resin for blister resistance, and decks were foam-cored for stiffness with plywood reinforcement at load points such as the mast step, with the hull-to-deck joint bonded and through-bolted. Taylor's own design archive credited Precision's tooling with producing attractive, stylish, high-quality molded parts across the model line, from the Precision 15 to the Precision 23.
Lines and generations
The core of the catalog was a Keel/Centerboard series — the 18, 21, and 23 — that Precision marketed as a design it exclusively built for the small family trailerable-cruiser segment. At the larger end, Precision extended the 27's transom and added a swim step to create the 28; the 27 and 28 were also the only boats in the line with an inboard diesel auxiliary and optional wheel steering, a step up in specification that reportedly proved a challenge for the dealer network, so relatively few were produced. Separately from that trailerable-cruiser line, Precision's catalog also included the 11 Metre One Design, a fin-keel one-design sportboat with a lead bulb keel designed by Ron Holland together with Rolf Gyhlenius in the early 1990s — a different design lineage from Taylor's family cruisers, with a few hundred boats built.
Who Precision is for
Precision built for sailors wanting small, trailerable, family-oriented monohulls rather than bluewater passagemakers, a niche the Porter brothers' one family occupied for 40 straight years under one primary designer. Sailing World magazine named the Precision 185 its 2003 Boat of the Year winner in the Best Value category, and even after production ended in 2018, Bill Porter kept replacement parts available through the Sarasota operation — a rare continuity story for a builder that size.
