Wooden Boat AtlasDesigners, builders & classes · v3.0

Atlas / Designers

born 1942 · Soquel and Santa Cruz, California

Bill Lee

Yacht designer and builder — Santa Cruz

Fast is fun. Lee built ultralight boats in a converted chicken coop above Santa Cruz and set a Transpac record with Merlin that stood twenty years.

Yard
'The Coop', a converted chicken coop on Hilltop Road, Soquel
Philosophy
Ultralight displacement — often half the weight of contemporaries
Brokerage
Wizard Yachts, Ltd., Santa Cruz
  • 1973Chutzpah — Transpac winner
  • 1973Santa Cruz 27 — about 145 built
  • 1977Merlin — 68-ft ULDB; Transpac monohull record for twenty years
  • 1985Santa Cruz 70 — 19 built

Wooden Boat Atlas v3.0 · built 30 July 2026 · a project of the Golden Gate Wooden Boat Foundation · licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 · open data · corrections