Lazzara Yachts

It's been well documented, but can you run down your family history with boat building?

My father built the world's first big fiberglass boat in Chicago in the 1950s, a 40' fiberglass sloop, which was a big boat 50 years ago. It went well but I don't think the public was ready for that, so he went out to California, hooked up with some people and started Columbia Yachts. They went on to become the largest sailboat builder in the world. He went public with the company and then moved on. After his non-compete clause ended he started Gulfstar and my brother Brad and I joined him in the 1970s. We built primarily motor-sailers and trawlers. We raced sailboats all our lives and then powerboats later on, so we've been on the racing scene both in sail and power all our lives. In 1990 Gulfstar went on to merge with Viking Co., and Brad and I founded this company in 1991.

Did you get your design inspiration from growing up so close to the industry?

It was a new industry and I would tag along with Dad and meet the founders of our modern day industry. I don't know if you would call it inspiration, but certainly knowing Olin Stephens, Phil Rhodes and the draftsmen who worked for Columbia at the time, like Bill Tripp Sr. and Charlie Morgan, were an influence. And my background is with both sail and power, which is unusual. For the past 30 years I've designed sailboats from 30'-80', as well as powerboats from 20'-106', both racing and cruising.

But honestly I think my inspiration came more from industrial design - looking at cars or other products. I've designed buildings and done some product design, and it's always beneficial to look outside the boating industry for inspiration.

Can you talk about the evolution of fiberglass from the 1960s to today?

You really can't compare it. We've gone from open contact molding to closed contact molding, injection molding, impregs - in most production companies I think open contact molding is still pretty predominant. We vacuum-bag everything - that includes huge 100' structures - we use inter-directional material, stress engineering, and have a history of developing a lot of different materials. We were involved with a company in the Seventies that developed tri- and bi-axial fiberglass. We're an engineering-oriented company. From that standpoint we're always looking at how to improve the product. During our racing days we learned you've got to build them light and you've got to build them strong, and you have to look at all the details - when you look at the performance of our yachts, it comes from our racing background.

What will be the next yacht construction revolution?

We have made some patents in the molding process, but what we've been working on is in the advancement of using automation and robotics, with five-axis routers. For example, 80 percent of the finish on this boat is automated, which you couldn't do 10 years ago. We ask, "How do we raise the quality, yet keep the price down by using robotics and automation?" I'm not suggesting that boat companies are going to 100 percent robotics, but I am suggesting that the use of computers and robots are raising the quality level. That's exciting to us because if we were a larger company or a conglomerate we wouldn't have the freedom to do it.

Maybe this is a bad comparison, but the 106 reminds me of my Honda Accord - which I love - because it's a model that started out great and evolved into the Acura and keeps improving. Is that analogy OK?

No question about it. We want to push that hot button with the person who walks up and sees the boat and says, "Wow, that's a Lazzara." That's the icon of the boat as it would be with Ferrari, Acura or Jaguar. Then we can get them inside and show them all the engineering parameters. It's nice when it's recognized as something special and people tell us we are doing a nice job. We have great freedom in this company. If we didn't push the envelope it wouldn't be exciting. You can always count on new and exciting things from Lazzara yachts.

Tampa 813.835.5300 | Ft. Lauderdale 954.522.2118 | Great Lakes 586.772.1550