A class that owes much to an energetic owners’ group
Issue 41 : Mar/Apr 2005
The Tayana Owners’ Group (TOG) is a diverse, energetic, and passionate group of sailors of Tayana, CT, and Vancouver sailboats and motorsailers. For more than 10 years, Bill and Rockie Truxall have been the default leaders of this loyal clan due to their joint role as publishers of the member publication, TOG News.
Until recently, this 24-page newsletter has appeared quarterly in the mailboxes of up to 500 dues-paying members when many other sailboat owners’ group newsletters were struggling to get members, to get news and article contributions from members, and to break even on the printing-and-postage-versus-dues-paid balance sheet.
Long before she became Rockie Truxall, Kathie Rocknee learned to sail at a YMCA camp in Iowa. Before long she was a camp sailing instructor. Many years went by before she met Bill in church, a church with three Kathys. Nicknames were assigned to keep the identities straight. Kathie Rocknee became Rockie, and so she remains today, although she’s also known as Grandma Rockie to a select few.
Bill’s course through life led through a 27-year career in the U.S. Navy: aircraft carriers, the battleship New Jersey, submarines, and destroyers. He saw service in Vietnam on a destroyer and on a sub. He ended his career as a commander and was captain of the destroyers USS Robert L. Wilson and USS Vesole.
Upon retirement from the Navy, he bought a Tanzer 28. The Tanzer served well, but Bill says, “It’s really just a weekend boat.”
Wanted a plane
Of his sailing passion, Bill says, “I really wanted to buy an airplane, but a sailboat is less expensive to run.” That comment puts a new light on the old saw about a boat being nothing more than a hole in the water into which one pours money. An airplane, by extension then, would be a black hole that sucks money. To pay for his sailing habit, Bill worked as a consulting engineer (as many other retired military personnel do in the Washington, D.C., beltway) until his second retirement in 1995.
Bill and a mutual sailing friend, who owned a Cheoy Lee 33, began looking for their next boats. They both settled on the Bob Perry-designed Tayana 37 as the boat for them. “It was, at the time, considered to be the high end of what a couple could manage together,” Bill says. The time was 1985. “You could get a Tayana 37,” Bill recalls with a smile, “for $39,995 . . . sailaway FOB Taiwan.” And some new owners did take ownership of their boats in Taiwan, saving an additional $5,000 charge for shipping and $5,000 more for insurance.
The interiors of the Tayanas were infinitely customizable. You’ll scarcely see two the same. With the help of another Tayana 37 owner who was an architect, the Truxalls got their plans together and got their boat into production. They deliberated for 18 months on their interior layout. By the time they placed their order, the local dealer was in litigation with another dealer, and their boat was not delivered until 1988.
Seaquestor II was shipped to Baltimore Harbor. Bill remembers the day well. Moving from a Tanzer 28 to a Tayana 37, his perspective of this new, heftier, and much longer boat was that it was going to be huge. He expected to see his new boat the moment he arrived on the pier. In truth, he couldn’t find her. Seaquestor was lost among the offloaded cargo of the delivering ship.
Beautiful interior
Now 15 years later, Bill says with fondness, “You can’t buy a U.S. boat with a more beautiful interior,” and Rockie nods in agreement. The two haven’t done a great number of modifications to their good old boat, as so many boatowners do. They’re the first owners, after all, and they got her the way they wanted her to begin with.
They’ve kept Seaquestor shipshape and pristine, although their plans for bluewater passages have faded a bit. Now they enjoy sailing the Chesapeake and attending owners’ rendezvous. When Bill retired from his engineering career, they moved to a waterfront home in Reedville, Virginia, where Seaquestor is docked a few footsteps from the door.
Bringing their baby home from a Maryland marina may have been a mistake. “When your boat is somewhere else, you make a point of packing and going to the boat,” Rockie points out. “When it’s in your backyard, it seems almost everything else comes before the boat.”
The largest “everything else” that comes before their boat is that the Truxalls now spend their summers in Iowa supervising Rockie’s family farms. She sails a 12-foot dinghy there on Spirit Lake. The Shell Lake dinghy is easily rigged and sailed by one. It brings back fond memories of teaching sailing to campers. In fact, Rockie is teaching sailing again during her summers there.
How did a couple of Chesapeake Bay sailors become the guardians of the TOG News and the entire owners’ group? The founder of the newsletter was Norm Demain who was in touch with 20 or so fellow Tayana owners willing to share tips and frustrations. He started a small newsletter in order to better pass the information along.
Much to resolve
“Norm would write to the factory,” Bill says. “He’d tell them, ‘You’ve got to resolve this,’ and they would. There was much to be resolved in the early days. While the Taiwanese were expert craftsmen, they were not necessarily sailors.”
He smiles and continues, “The first boats were built in 1975. People needed support and information in those days. The builder was so unsophisticated.” The story told most frequently concerns the company’s decision to move a 90-gallon fuel tank from beneath a saloon settee to beneath the V-berth in order to create more useable storage space in the cabin. A good idea in theory. The problem is that, when full, this iron tank adds an extra 700 pounds to the bow, causing trim problems and hobby-horsing. Many owners have since relocated this awkward tank.
After 12 years, Norm Demain grew tired of the publishing job he’d created for himself. About that time the Truxalls were sitting in the cockpit with John Kraft, another Tayana 37 owner, looking at the TOG News which proclaimed in the headline: “This is your last newsletter.” There was much discussion that day and at a later rendezvous about who would take over the job. The Truxalls allowed themselves to be persuaded. There were 190 members at the time.
Membership more than doubled to 500 on their watch. But now 12 more years have gone by, and Bill and Rockie still hope to find the next publishers after giving up the job themselves recently. “This is a labor of love,” Bill notes. “Two have called to offer their services, but the first question each time was, ‘What’s your annual profit?’ There is no annual profit.” And so the so-called “volunteers” melted away.
Strong organization
For the good of all, it behooves someone within the group to pick up the mantle of responsibility. In 1982, when Tayanas were relatively new, Practical Sailor recognized the value of a strong owners’ organization.
The reviewer said, “The Tayana 37 is both typical and atypical of Taiwanese boats. She is typical in the problems that existed due to the builder’s inexperience with seagoing yachts, typical with communication and language problems, typical in having dealers who varied widely in both ability and their desire to help their customers after the sale.
“She is atypical in that many of these problems have been solved over six years of production, in that a good owners’ association and the domination of one dealer . . . have resulted in real improvements in the boat. Anyone considering a Tayana 37 should join the owners’ association and read all the back newsletters before buying the boat. If your dealer either fails to mention the owners’ association or denigrates it, find another dealer.”
Another review, by British sailor David Phillips, stated even more emphatically: “One of the offshoots and great strengths of the T-37 is the existence of a thriving owners’ association. Formed in 1979, it has faithfully recorded owners’ views, voyages, problems, and the alleviation of those problems. It has campaigned on behalf of owners and has been instrumental in achieving gradual improvement in the boat and its gear . . . This group must surely rank as one of the most effective owners’ groups dedicated to the products of a single company.”
Since active owners’ associations, ongoing publicity, reviews, and documentation increase the value of any sailboat, the incentive to maintain the group is strong. The question about who will take over the leadership role for the next 12 years remains. Bill and Rockie Truxall have done a dynamite job on behalf of Tayana owners everywhere.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
