Seabreeze History
Seabreeze Chronology
Note: Production numbers are approximate, and are not necessarily assigned in sequence.
| Month/Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| Dec, 1962 | Line drawings completed |
| 1963 | Hulls #1 & #2 completed |
| Jan, 1963 | Allied ad showing side view drawing |
| Jan, 1964 | Allied ad showing boat underway, no sail number |
| 1964 | Production #6 - 25 |
| 1965 | Production #27 - 44 |
| 1966 | Production #46 - 64. Aluminum port frames introduced around #50 |
| 1967 | Production #65 - 72. Aluminum centerboard introduced around #70 |
| 1968 | Production #74 - 96 |
| 1969 | Production #98 - 104. Aluminum stemhead fitting introduced around #100 |
| 1970 | Production #107 - 116. First Citation was #107 |
| 1971 | Production #117 - 132 |
| 1972 | Production #133 - 135 |
Beginnings of the ASOA
I’ve been trying to come up with dates on the beginning of SBOA. I think that 1990 or 1991, Gene might have called me to ask if I knew of any organized group. When I replied in the negative, he asked if I thought that owners might be interested. Anyway, we discussed how to go about it and the notices to the boat magazines were sent out by Gene. The first meeting of any sort was at the Atlantic City Sailboat Show in I believe 1993. About 12 owners showed up. There the SBOA was chosen for a name and Mel Converse pushed for something called e-mail for communications. Gene didn’t want anything to do with e-mail and stayed with snail mail. After I got e-mail, he would sometimes asked me to send something for him or I would take a printout to him.
The first rendezvous was in Block Island in 1995. After that Gene usually hosted one at the Shelter Island Yacht Club every year. The first Maine Rendezvous was in Pulpit Harbor 1996 and then in succeeding years at Bucks Harbor, Frenchboro, Tennants Harbor, Castine, and repeating at Frenchboro and Tennants Harbor. “Destiny” made most of them.
We went down to Atlantic City at least four winters. The Boat Show would give us a meeting room for free. We also had gatherings in the winter at Essex, Mystic, Portland, Easton, and Miami, The Chesapeake Rendezvous scenes were in Solomans, Rappahannock and just south of Annapolis.
Special Recognition to Two Outstanding Members
With a click of a button we can be in contact with about a hundred other owners of Seabreezes, ask questions, take part in back and forth email discussions of ideas pertinent to our boats, view the various attributes of our new web site and enjoy the comradery of the Allied Seabreeze Owners Association. It’s very easy to take this for granted but we owe a tremendous debt to two leaders of our group who have made all this possible. Unfortunately few of us have had the opportunity to personally meet either of these two gentlemen but here are a few words about each one.
Gene Reardon
Gene Reardon owned a Seabreeze, sailed on the south shore of Long Island and cruised to Maine. He was a yachtsman in every sense of the word. He honored yacht club protocol with dress and colors and was a fine sailor. He liked his boat to the extent that after selling the first one, buying a larger boat, he went back looking for a second Seabreeze. It was his idea to contact other Seabreeze owners for the general purpose of comradery. Gene assembled a few owners at a meeting in 1993 and the group was born. During the next ten years he searched out most of the other hundred plus Seabreeze owners and accumulated data on the boats and owner specifics. Without his original ideas, initiative and dedication we would have no ASOA. Gene passed away in 2003.
Mel Converse
Mel Converse attended those first ASOA meetings and suggested email as a means of communication between members. Mel sails his Seabreeze on Chesapeake Bay and cruised extensively to Maine. We all have sent our emails to the address “Mel Converse” for years but Mel remained, to most of us, a “name only” for our communication. Without his forethought and expertise our group would not have grown from the first few attendants at a meeting to the world-wide, web connected, group we now have. As our new ASOA web site recently came on line Mel decided to incorporate his email into the web site. Without Mel’s care and perseverance in handling the thousands of email messages over the twenty-two years we would not have the successful, unified ASOA as we know it.