Godsil/Miller

In 1974 Marty Godsil bought molds, keel casting forms and an unrigged Dragon hull from Kelvin Savell of San Diego and built his first Dragon, USA258 Eclipse. Marty had bought his first Dragon, USA13 Reluctant, in 1962 and spent many hours fixing her up. She was the first of several Dragons that Marty raced in the Puget Sound area. For his new Dragon building business, Godsil partnered with Earl Miller of Miller Marine, an experienced fibreglass builder on Bainbridge Island, to build hulls. They went on to build 14 more GRP Dragons, using the Savill design (sandwich deck and hulls and integrated liner). Seven were sold to the Dragon Fleet in Vancouver Canada and several were sold to Europe where Marty was an active competitor in the 1970s. In 1980 Marty leased the molds to O.E. Scuppe of Rochester NY who, over the next two years, built 10 more Dragons. In November 1981, after some years of debate on the Savill construction method with the IDA, IYRU and European builders, the IYRU ruled that the North American built GRP Dragons did not meet Class Rules, but existing Dragons were grandfathered in and allowed to continue to compete. O.E. returned the molds to the West Coast where Godsil and Miller finished two hulls they had previous produced and then sold the molds to Lowell Chang in Hong Kong. Lowell constructed an inner liner mold to be compliant the newly clarified rules and went on to build 24 Dragons.