Great stuff guys,  I love the history of boat builders.   I grew up in the DFW area sailing on Lake Grapevine there was PD26 directly across from our slip and I became enamored with the boat, different from all the others, that was the early 80s and by the time I was old enough to request more info from the builder PD was long gone.  Anyhow over the last 20 years I've built up a large collection of documentation on sailboats and powerboats (15+ filing cabinets) and I peaked into the Parker Dawson file this evening and I must admit it's pretty thin.  Here's some details

82 price List From PD (Hingham, MA) - PD26 28.3K, PD 26D 35.8K, I also have a brochure or two on the Parker Dawson Coaster 21 cat ketch, 13.4K  9/82.  I'm sure many of you guys know this but Nauset has bought the molds for several other NE builders over the years including Cape Dory (mostly power, several sail molds), Parker Dawson (26 and Coaster 21), Squadron Yachts (Handy Cat, America, Minuteman), Mini 12, etc.  Anyhow I have a Nauset 26S brochure from 1/84, Base was 21.9K, and a full line brochure from 3/86 which lists the 26 still in production.  Not sure if you have these in the brochure section - send me your address and I'll send you copies.

Nauset does fairly big business in boat sales, especially Boston Whaler among others, I lived in Boston for 5 years and picked up my yearly BW brochures there, you drive by the old Boston Whaler factory to get out to the Cape, the factory was converted to a Home Depot when they moved to Florida.

We had a 1976 P/D sloop. Bought her in 1985 and sold her in 1995. Names was "Yeraz." I spoke to Parker once on the phone. He said he stopped building them because they got too expensive, about $40,000 at the end. Molds went to Nauset Marine. I believe they built two as Nauset 26s. I wrote a long article about the boat and what was entailed in getting her back in shape, which was published in "Messing About in Boats." We sold her becasue we bought a bigger boat, an O'Day 37 center cockpit, which looks like the P/D's mommy. We are sold on the center cockpit concept.

Our buyer was a man from Washington State (we live in New York City). We met through the internet news group alt.boats.cruising. We did not have a trailer so he had one built then dragged that trailer all the way from washointo to New York in February. He really wanted that boat. He stayed with us a couple of days, loaded the boat on the trailer, went to the Gulf of Mexico and did some sailing, then dragged it back to Washington. We have since lost touch.

That boat had the Yanmar YSE8 engine, toilet between the berths in the aft cabin and an icebox under the quarter berth. I equipped it with a thermoelectric cooler unit and also put a pump on the water tank. We bought her for $13,500 and sold her for $6,500.

I will be happy to post the article, entitled "We'll never fall in love again ," if anyone is interested.

Life is a spinnaker wrap!

I know this is a dead topic but anyway, I worked for Bombay Yachts in the late '70's and went to Vegas to bring the Dawson company back to Clearwater after we were purchased by Alexander Dawson. We never built any boats that I can remember in Clearwater. I do remember driving one of the company trucks filled with file cabinets spilling out onto the highway, the offices of Alexander Dawson in Vegas being 5 stories underground with a mural of Zurich that lit up the bank they owned, the owner's underground house, surreal. The 70's!
I did sell one Dawson to a customer in South Carolina out of our Dealership in St Petersburg , Coastal Pilot Yacht Sales.