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Introduction—Gougeon Brothers C H A P T E R and WEST SYSTEM® Epoxy 1 The following is a brief history of the Gougeon brothers, the company they formed, and how WEST SYSTEM epoxy evolved. The Gougeon Brothers Meade, Joel, and Jan Gougeon 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 appren- ticed 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. The Gougeons 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 Gougeon Brothers Boatworks to build light- weight, sail-powered DN iceboats. They 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, Gougeon-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. They both still actively race DN iceboats. In 1975, the Gougeons 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 Joel Gougeon 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 Gougeon iceboats were inter- ested in using the resin system that the Gougeons had developed for their own projects. By 1971, Gougeon Brothers 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. They 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. The commercially available epoxies of that time had many advantages over other adhesive options, such as resor- cinol and WeldwoodTM (a urea formaldehyde powder dissolved in water before use).PDF Image | Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction
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