The former O'DAY Factory at 848 Airport Road in the Fall River, MA Industrial Park is now housing 2 marine companies. New England Ropes has been located there since a few years after O'DAY moved out (check their web site for history) and recently Pearson Pilings moved into another part of the building (address is actually 846 Airport Rd. if I recall). Pearson Pilings is an offshoot of the old TPI (Tillotson-Pearson Inc) run by one of Everett Pearson's sons, they make fiberglass composite pilings for docks.
O'DAY went bankrupt due to many factors, one had to be the economic climate of the late 1980's, with a stock market plunge in Fall of 1987. O'DAY was on somewhat "shaky" ground around then, having just gone through a buyout by a group of employees and investors. O'DAY had been owned by Bangor Punta since the mid 1960's but BP apparently wished to get out of the boatbuilding part of their holdings around 1984-6 and the company was sold to Lear-Siegler and made a division of that company's Starcraft Boats (Starcraft Sailboats) Part of the Starcraft Sailboats Division was Prindle Catamarans, but these were not part of O'DAY/CAL.... they may have been built at the Fall River plant, but this was not a decision made by O'DAY Management and they were just another part of Starcraft at the time. Prior to this, Bangor Punta had consolidated their CAL Boats and O'DAY Sailboats divisions (offices combined in about 1980, manufacturing in around 1983 at the Fall River Plant of O'DAY). The RANGER FUN a 23' retractable keel racing design was brought to the O'DAY facility as well (this was a Jenneau design introduced to the US market, Jenneau was connected to Bangor Punta but I don't recall who "owned" who). Around this time O'DAY was phasing out their "traditional" designs and introducing the more European style designs (302, 322, 240, 272,280) and by 1987 the small boat emphasis of O'DAY started to disappear as the DS III was the only "daysailing" model being built.
That buyout in around 1987 was financed based on future sales.....just as sailboat sales started to slow down...... with funding tight, suppliers often had to wait long for payments on what they delivered to O'DAY.....this couldn't go on for long....and by May 1989 the bank locked the doors. O'DAY production (in limited numbers?) was briefly moved to the Pearson Yachts Factory in Portsmouth, RI after Pearson bought some of the O'Day line to be run as a separate company under the same roof. Unfortunately, Pearson had also just undergone a buyout by an investment group of Employees and Pearson Boat owners when Grumman-Allied sold off some of their boating holdings and in 1991 they too went bankrupt. The O'DAY 290 was introduced during the short run of the Pearson-built O'DAYs, interesting to note that the 290 was just a slight redesign of the CR Hunt Associates CAL 28 introduced while CAL production was housed at the O'DAY Factory.
Joe, last that I knew, Rudy had the 222 molds, but they may have been lost in a fire after I saw them listed in a mailing that I received about 15 years ago from D&R. At that time D&R had the molds for: Widgeon, DS II, 192, 222, 240, 290 and 35. Maybe others, but those are the ones that I recall.
