Good afternoon all. Here's some information I located last year. Happy New Year all. I'm heading for San Diego in an hour for a couple day's of sailing! Steve
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Date: November 1, 2003
From: Jere Austin
jerea@alltel.net
I may have a bit of information to clear up some of your Endeavour history.
The Lancer 25 was built for Lancer by Endeavour. There never was an Endeavour 25. Endeavour produced the east coast Lancer 25's at their Belcher Rd. facility starting in 1975. The 25 was a pop off the Columbia T-23 which was being produced when Dick Valdes left Columbia. He and Maury Thrienen modified the boat to be a 25 and sought manufacturers with excess manufacturing space to build them on contract. Al Larson and myself, Jere Austin, were the agents for Lancer in the South East region. They had a west coast and a new England manufacturer. Dick Valdes is, of course, the older brother of Rob Valdes who co-started Endeavour with John Brooks with the Irwin 32 tooling which they bought from Ted Irwin. Dick was a pioneer in the fiberglass industry taking Columbia to stardome with the initial help of Vince Lazarra.
Also, the modified E-32 was a house design by the in-house production, design guy, Dennis Robbins. Dennis also modified the Creekmoore 34 to miraculously become the E-37. Bob Johnson came along later with the 43. Dennis went on to run Ted Irwins designs and later to the mega yacht company, Trident, in Tampa.
I also worked for Endeavour in their twilight years running the tooling and fiberglass production. Regretfully, my last responsibility was to lay off the whole crew when John and Rob shut the company down in 1986!
Hope this helps. Jere Austin (near Cleveland, Ohio)
jerea@alltel.net
