Meade’s Everlasting Experiment
The father of epoxy and wood boatbuilding has passed his wildly successful experimental craft to the next generation of family caretakers.
competitive. Work on boats is what they do at Gougeon, especially in the winter, and they were honored to continue Meade’s great experiment.
“I knew then the boat was famous and unique and had quite a history to it,” Gurski says. “That being said, she was getting old and showing her age. Meade had a philosophy that the boat needed to last only as long as he would last. As he got older, some things on the boat went undone—or got done quickly for another day of sailing.”
For Ben Gougeon, one of 10 children, the boat was never really more than another vessel used for family outings and weeknight races in the once-thriving Bay City racing scene. As a kid, he says, he was more or less ballast. “Sailing came so naturally to my father, it was hard for him to teach others how to sail. It was more like, pull on that red line until I tell you to stop,” Gougeon says. “At the time, I never appreciated her for what she was. To me, as a kid, it was normal. I didn’t realize the vast differences between Adagio and all the other multihulls.”
Nor did he realize how fast the boat was, and still is today: “It used to drive me crazy because whenever we’d finish a race, my dad would hove to, and we’d sit there and wait for every boat to finish. We’d be around the course in like 20 minutes and then wait for what felt like hours. It wasn’t that he wanted to show everyone that he’d won; he was too humble for that. He just thought it was customary to wait for all the boats to come in, and that’s what he would do. He would talk to people as they came by and congratulate them on a good race and that kind of thing.”
Only once Gougeon, who now works for the company, and Gurski, who also considers himself a late-comer to competitive sailing, started learning how to sail the boat under the tutelage of the Gougeon brothers did they realize what they’d been bestowed. “We fell in love with it,” Gurski says. “Then came the caretaking part of it, which comes from building a relationship with the boat, sailing it and racing. It’s like your dad’s old Chevy; you develop an affection for it, and then find yourself spending an inordinate amount of time maintaining and repairing it. Part of what makes us unique as a crew—and as a family, and us as a company—is that we really like to work with our hands. It’s therapy for us in the boat shop; it keeps us closer to our customers, using our products to constantly maintain and repair our own boats.”
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