An Interview with Everett Pearson
One of the Founding Fathers of Fiberglass Boats

by Vicky MacFeidh

Everett Pearson, born in 1933 and a graduate of Brown University in Economics, has earned his title as "the Grandfather of Fiberglass Boat Building." While not the first to build a fiberglass boat he is most certainly acknowledged as the first to successfully build a fiberglass production boat, having built more then 10,000 over the past 45 years.
Not only is he a pioneer and leader in the Marine Industry, he is an interesting and charismatic gentleman. It was an honor to meet him during the recent Boats Afloat Show in Seattle. The occasion for Pearson's visit was to conduct a seminar on the history of fiberglass boat building, hosted by Sail Northwest.
Officially retired, Everett was actually a last minute replacement for his son, Mark Pearson, who now runs the TPI Composite factory out of Warren, Rhode Island. A few days before the New Year, Mark fell of the roof of his house and is temporarily in a wheelchair with two broken legs. Our thanks to Mark for the loan of his dad.
In town for just under 24 hours, Everett was surprised to learn that this was an outdoor boat show! Everett and his wife recently moved to Florida, where they are avid golfers, although he assured me that boats were still his first love, after his wife.
"When you get into this business you can get carried away. I met my wife when she was 13 and I was just 14. We have been married for 46 years this year. She stuck by me when I first started and had no money for the first two years." On a rainy Wednesday afternoon, Everett and Jono Billings, International Sales Manager for TPI Composites, sat with 48¡ Degrees North in the corner of a restaurant at the south end of Lake Union. Just a few steps away from the Center of Wooden Boats, Everett reflected on his involvement in the development of fiberglass boat building and discussed the future of performance boat building:
"I grew up in a tenant house in New York. I sold papers, all the usual stuff to hustle a buck. But our family also had a summer cottage where I learned to sail on an old eight-foot punt that a family friend had given us. I fixed it up and taught myself to sail. The cottage had been built in 1933 on a piece of land that my family bought in 1932 for $100 dollars. Waterfront lots went for $300, with the next lot back being $200. We ended up three lots back."
"I built my first dinghy in 1955, when I was still in college, with my cousin Clinton. Our fathers were brothers. Another friend of the family, Ted Harrison, had read an article in Popular Mechanics about boat building with a new material called polyester fiberglass. I had done a lot of wood projects with my dad while growing up but this was something new. Ted bought a drum of resin for Clint and me to experiment with. We made up the male mold, then the female mold, then attempted, five or six times, to make up a dinghy using a crude vacuum method. But we couldn't get the process to flow evenly and wound up with holes in the hull. We finally gave in and ended up laying them up the traditional way with mat and resin. I often think back and wish we had stayed with the vacuum process."
One of those first efforts, a yellow molded hull aptly named "Buttercup", was recently found, cleaned up and presented to Everett. It still floats.
Within a year and a half the boys had moved up to 15' boats, all being built and sold out of their garage. "Clint and I ended up getting a line of credit from the bank for $2,500 each. That's all the bank would give us, initially. We built that up with lines of credit from our vendors..."
By the summer of 1958 Tom Potter, who worked for American Boat Building in East Greenwich, asked if the cousins, now working out of an empty textile mill in Bristol, R.I., would consider building a fiberglass boat that would sell for less then $10,000. Carl Alberg did the design and the Triton was born. Plans were made to introduce the boat at the New York National Boat Show in 1959, but just weeks before the show the money ran out. Desperate, Everett and Clinton went to visit Ray Pearson (no relation), the local Funeral Director. Ray, who had gone to school with Everett's mother, piled the boys into the company "van", a big black limousine, drove them to the bank and asked "how much do you need?" to which they replied "$3,500." That $3,500 was just enough to pay off the payroll and enter the boat show. The boat was a hit with 18 boats being sold. "We eventually sold about 800 or so and most of them are still out sailing - unfortunately. Turns out we built those first boats way too conservatively. And most of them are still out there sailing!"
In 1959, needing additional space, Everett and Clinton bought the Herreshoff boat building company - and the employees. "We learned a lot about the old time traditions." L. Francis Herreshoff himself came by one day to check out the new operation. "Frozen snot" was his only comment.
In 1961 Grumman Allied Industries bought a controlling interest in Pearson Yachts and the next five years were ones of steady growth for the now well-established yacht manufacturer. But by 1966 Everett was ready to leave. "I wanted to go out on my own but had to agree not to compete with my former company," which continued to carry the Pearson name, "for three years. So I decided to go into the industrial business."
(Editors note: TPI has recently purchased back the original Pearson Yacht name with plans to introduce a new line of traditional lobster-style recreation power boats.)
About the same time Everett met Neil Tillotson while helping out on Tillotson's 58-footer. Tillotson, 70 years old at the time, wanted to go into business with Pearson, suggested a 50/50 partnership and Tillotson-Pearson, Inc. was formed. Known today as TPI Composites, Tillotson-Pearson Inc. has gone on to become a major force in the industrial uses of fiberglass-reinforced composites.
"I had a business contract drawn up, but Neil never looked at it. We went for 28 years on a handshake. Our business philosophy was to employ good people, take care of our employees, and create new things." The partnership lasted until 1993 when Tillotson sold out to John Walton, son of Walmart founder Sam Walton. Now 102, Tillotson can still be reached at his office. In the early 1990s TPI was forced to revisit the vacuum system—by the EPA. "At that time we were one of the biggest emitters of VOC's (volatile organic compounds) in the state. We had been trying for some time to develop the vacuum technology, but were still working with the resin outside of the bag. A salesman from Dupont suggested we talk to Bill Seemann who had been successful in developing a closed vacuum system. I took one look and said "you got it!"
TPI bought into the patent that Bill had and now use the SCRIMP process to build all of their products; currently producing almost 300 J/Boats a year. "The SCRIMP process is consistent and repeatable—ideal for one-design boat building." SCRIMP stands for Seemann Composite Resin Infusion Molding Process. It is a closed, vacuum-assisted, resin-transfer molding (VARTM) process used for the fabrication of fiberglass products. Since 1993, TPI Composites has established itself as a pioneer in the use of the process to build, among other things, buses, wind generator blades, SwimEx hydrotherapy pools and, of course, J/Boats.
The advantages of SCRIMP "are huge," explained Jono Billings. "The fiber content of the laminate with the SCRIMP process is 70% by weight to 30% resin, with less than 1% trapped air spaces." In the world of balsa cored fiberglass boat building this is an important factor because by filling those spaces with resin you eliminate the ability for water to travel through the hull.
Equally attractive is the environmental aspect. "It's revolutionary," explained Jono, "it solves the VOC problem. Our factory employees work in street clothes, without the need for Tyvex suites and facemasks. The future, for all fiberglass manufacturing will be closed, vacuum bag, molding system. This industry needs to catch up to what Everett has been doing for years."