Schock sailboats: three generations of one Newport Beach family, from dinghies to a canting-keel racer
W. D. "Bill" Schock built his first boat, a Skimmer dinghy, at age thirteen in the garage of his family's Hollywood, California home. After serving as a crew chief in World War II, he set up shop in Newport Beach — one of the first boatbuilders to arrive in the area — building International 14 sailboats at his father's house on the Balboa Peninsula near the Pavilion. In 1946, Bill and his wife Betty formally began building International 14s as the company's first product line, founding W. D. Schock Corp. The company's own materials say it was the first boat builder to make a production fiberglass boat; the Orange County Register later identified that boat as the Lehman 10. Across its history the yard built more than 70 different designs.
Origins and ownership
Bill Schock had three sons, Tom, Scott, and Steve, and the business split along their interests: Tom took over boat manufacturing, moving the company from Santa Ana to Corona — the operation that became W. D. Schock Corp — while Scott built the family's separate retail and service dealership in Newport Beach, and Steve became the company's in-house designer before later joining his wife Ruth to run the retail side, after Scott and his wife Marie retired around 2015. At the time of the January 2011 sale, all three sons were still active in their respective branches: Tom and his wife Jane owned and operated the manufacturing facility, Scott and Marie owned the retail dealership, and Steve, by then a licensed marine architect, had drawn the lines for the company's most recent success, the Harbor 20.
After 65 years of family ownership, W. D. Schock Corp — builder of the Sabot, Lehman 12, Lido 14, Santana 20, Santana 22, Wavelength 24, Schock 35, Schock 40, and Harbor daysailors, credited by then with more than 13,000 boats built — was sold in January 2011 to Alexander Vucelic von Raduboj, as Cruising World and the Orange County Register both reported. Tom remained on the company's board of directors in a Brand Ambassador role. New tooling for the Harbor 30 was completed around the time of the transition. John O'Donnell serves as president, continuing what the company's own materials call a family-oriented sailing legacy. Vucelic von Raduboj framed the change as continuity rather than rupture, saying what Bill Schock had started with the Lido 14 lived on through Steve's designs for the Harbor line.
The designers
Wendell Calkins designed the Schock 22, launched in the 1950s and described by the company as the first true small, trailerable ocean racer of its kind — 26 were built, which the company's own history calls a remarkable achievement for the era. Steve Schock became the yard's defining in-house designer of the 1990s, drawing the Schock 35, the Santana 23 Max, and the Harbor line of daysailers in a run the company credits with a wave of innovation, alongside a program that produced more than 50 racing prototypes that decade, from Formula 40 multihulls to America's Cup contenders including the catamaran Fleury Michon 7. The Schock 40 carried a design partnership beyond the family: its canting ballast twin foil system, CBTF, was developed by America's Cup design team DynaYacht together with sailor Peter Isler.
Construction through the eras
W.D. Schock's central claim on boatbuilding history is an early one: the company says it built the first production fiberglass boat, which the Orange County Register identified as the Lehman 10. Over the following decades the yard introduced other manufacturing firsts, per the Register — the Penguin, described as the first production vacuum-bagged fiberglass and Unicore sandwich boat; the Go Boat, a flat, light skiff built without a rudder or tiller; and an early aluminum mast.
The clearest technical thread in the catalog runs through the Schock 40, introduced in 2000 as the first production boat equipped with CBTF. Wired described the system as an 1,800-pound lead bulb hanging below the hull like a pendulum, swinging side to side to offset the heeling load of wind and speed; the canting armature is limited to no more than 55 degrees to guard against capsize in a gust or rogue wave. Because a canting bulb and armature provide no lift on their own, the Schock 40 pairs the system with dual, deep-draft foils that turn in sync — Wired likened the effect to all-wheel steering in a car.
Lines and generations
The earliest lines were small: International 14s at the outset, then the Lido 14 — which the company's history site dates to 1957, though a later company statement placed it in 1958 — remembered as launching in the late 1950s, the same year, per that account, that Steve Schock, youngest of the three brothers, was born. With more than 6,000 built, the Lido 14 stands as the most successful production model in the family's boatbuilding history. The Santana line and the Schock 35, developed from the Santana 35 with a longer keel and higher mast, carried the yard's racer-cruiser side, while the Harbor 20, 25, and 30 daysailers became Steve Schock's signature later work, and the Schock 40 stood apart as the CBTF-equipped ultralight racer that won regattas up and down the West Coast. The catalog as a whole has ranged from the 8-foot Naples Sabot dinghy to the 55-foot Schock 55.
Who Schock is for
A Schock sailboat carries three generations of one Newport Beach family's boatbuilding decisions — from Bill's early fiberglass firsts through Steve's in-house 1990s design wave to a 2011 sale that kept the yard's molds, name, and even a family Brand Ambassador in place. Buyers drawn to that continuity, and to a catalog that runs from a small one-design daysailer to a canting-keel racing yacht, are the audience W. D. Schock has built for since 1946.
