The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction - WEST SYSTEM Epoxy

Introduction—<strong>Gougeon</strong> <strong>Brothers</strong>
and WEST SYSTEM ®
Epoxy
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Gougeon</strong> <strong>Brothers</strong>
Meade, Joel, and Jan <strong>Gougeon</strong> grew up in Bay City,
Michigan, where they began building and racing
wooden boats as kids living on the Saginaw Bay of
Lake Huron. By age 13, Jan had decided that he wanted
to be a professional boatbuilder and he later apprenticed
with Vic Carpenter at Superior Sailboats. Meade
received a degree in Business Administration in 1960
and worked for several years in industrial sales, but he
also was building and racing multihull sailboats.
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Gougeon</strong>s were very early users of epoxy
resins and were intrigued with their possibilities for
boatbuilding. Using wood and epoxy, they built
and raced DN-class iceboats and high-performance
trimarans with great success. Two of Meade’s early
trimarans won national recognition in the late 1960s,
with the 25' (7.6m) C-class trimaran Victor T winning
the the 1969 North American Multihull Championships.
In 1969, Meade and Jan returned to Bay City and
started the <strong>Gougeon</strong> <strong>Brothers</strong> Boatworks to build lightweight,
sail-powered DN iceboats. <strong>The</strong>y moved into
what is now part of their present location, the former
Ben Huskins’ Boatworks on the Saginaw River, in 1971.
Using wood laminated with epoxy, they became the
largest builder of iceboats in the country. From 1970-
1975, <strong>Gougeon</strong>-built DNs dominated competition, as
did the brothers themselves. Jan holds 4 World, 8
National, and 4 Senior Championship titles, the most
recent in 2000; Meade holds 2 National and 8 Senior
titles. <strong>The</strong>y both still actively race DN iceboats.
In 1975, the <strong>Gougeon</strong>s sold their original iceboat
business to Norton Boatworks in Green Lake,
Wisconsin, in order to concentrate on the epoxy
business and building larger custom boats. Brother
CHAPTER
1
<strong>The</strong> following is a brief history of the <strong>Gougeon</strong> brothers, the company they formed, and how WEST SYSTEM
epoxy evolved.
Joel <strong>Gougeon</strong> had joined the company in 1971 to help
develop the epoxy business. He retired in 1985.
Meade and Jan still design, build and race multihulls for
their own use. Meade continues to race Adagio, a 35'
(10.7m) trimaran launched in 1970. This was the first
complete boat built incorporating WEST SYSTEM epoxy
and wood-composite construction techniques. It remains
competitive after 35 years, winning the Port Huron to
Mackinaw Open Class in 2002. Jan has also had many
singlehanded long distance racing successes with his 25'
(7.6m) trimaran Splinter, 35' (10.7m) trimaran Ollie, and
G32 catamaran. He is currently building a 39' (11.9m)
catamaran of his own design.
Development of WEST SYSTEM Brand Epoxy
Many people who saw the <strong>Gougeon</strong> iceboats were interested
in using the resin system that the <strong>Gougeon</strong>s had
developed for their own projects. By 1971, <strong>Gougeon</strong>
<strong>Brothers</strong> was selling WEST SYSTEM epoxy to other builders
and customers to use in building and repairing their
own boats.
Vic Carpenter had first introduced Meade and Jan to
epoxy resins in 1958. Vic learned about them from a
pattern maker and was one of the earliest users of
epoxy resins as a structural adhesive for wooden boats.
During the 1960s, Meade and Jan used epoxy as the
adhesive for their early boats. <strong>The</strong>y had mixed results
with the different epoxies they tried, but overall they
were impressed that epoxy could bond to many different
kinds of wood, metal, and fiber reinforcement; it
appeared to be very moisture resistant as well. <strong>The</strong>
commercially available epoxies of that time had many
advantages over other adhesive options, such as resorcinol
and Weldwood (a urea formaldehyde powder
dissolved in water before use).