DaySailer.org Forum

spoke36 wrote: I do not have a wooden brace between the seat and the center board bracket...yet. Boat 211 (1963, I think) did not have the thwart-arrangement, just a big L-bracket or two between the hull and each side of the centerboard bracket.

1963 sounds late for #211 - they were celebrating their 1500th DS that year.

How about 1962 then for hull 211?
Thanks!

What? Is this like Maxwell Smart's "Would you believe...?"

There's an unofficial hull number list on the forum and you might like to look at these entries:

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1958 O'Day  DS I          #  307   "Security Risk"     swiftsail          Santa Rosa, CA
1959 O'Day  DS I          #  316   "Vieja"             dssec              Fresno, CA

If #211 is in fact the correct DaySailer class number for your boat, then it would have to date to 1958 or earlier.

Those early years had the grooves in the deck molding giving the appearance of actual deck planking.

However, I'm not certain when this feature disappeared. Also, your version with the L bracket for the CB instead of the thwarts represents a transitional design: possibly (I'm guessing) one that immediately follows the change away from wooden seats and before wooden thwarts were re-introduced.

Now, from another list, we have class # 318 as listed with wooden seats and thwarts. Therefore, my question for you whether #211 is the correct one for your boat. If your evidence is solely a sail number (on the mainsail) that could be unreliable because of people selling used sails.

It would be interesting to have your boat in both databases, but only if we can be sure about where to place it. Otherwise, the combination of features is intriguing, but without means of placing it into the timeline it might confuse the data.

I think that I purchased the boat from the original owner in the late 1970s. I will check with him and the documentation that he supplied.
Part of the information included an Evinrude 4 hp 2-cycle twin that seems to be 1962 or 1963 which I assumed was part of the original purchase.
He seemed to have purchased it from J W Moretti in Peekskill, NY from what I recall. I will try to update this note within a week.
I thought that I had seen a small (0.5 inch by 1.25 inch) aluminum strip with 0211 on the left side just inside the cubby. The boat is currently covered with ice and snow and a search for the serial number will wait until spring has sprung.

A motor may have been a follow-on purchase. Or the boat may have sat on a lot for a bit (some people mentioned that as a possibility).

In principle, though, it looks like you should be able to get fairly solid information on your boat's early history; given it's transitional features, would allow to pinpoint that transition (which would be interesting from the point of history of the class).'

Now, those little metal plates is indeed where early boats hull and class numbers where recorded, so a photo of this together with careful notes and or photos of the seat/thwart/cb configuration, the rubrails at the back, the kind of traveler, the original jib-sheet layout where known, and description of the deck ("fake" planking, or presence or absence) of the raised circles on the side deck for jib fairleads outside the coaming.