When Tom Potter, sales manager for the American Boatbuilding Company, approached his bosses in the late 1950’s about building a smaller cruising auxiliary, they decided to pass. Potter, builder of the Vitesse 40 (now the Block Island 40), then took the Carl Alberg design to cousins Clint and Everett Pearson of Pearson yachts, builders of the Sea Sprite in Bristol, Rhode Island. After showing the plans around, the cousins decided, “This makes sense. Let’s do it,” Everett says today.

The first boat was built in time for the 1959 New York Boat Show and Pearson Yachts came away with 18 orders. More than 700 were built until production ceased in 1966, bringing fiberglass auxiliaries into the mainstream of sailing.

When asked why the Triton was so successful, Alberg has said that there was no other boat like her. By using fiberglass, she had as much room inside her a s a wooden 35-footer. The Pearson’s built in very a nice interior with accommodations for four that seemed to satisfy the needs of the average buyer. Alberg designed her with a wide flare forward for dryness and room for working on the deck. The Triton came out with either a loop or yawl rig. She was 28’3” long with a beam of 8’3” and a 6,900-pound displacement. Her auxiliary was a 25 horsepower Universal Atomic 4.

A telltale of success is durability and since the boats were built in the infancy of fiberglass construction, they were laid up by hand with more than a few layers of glass in the hulls. The boats will last forever, and the Triton Class Association gathers every year for a National Championship. Successful, ground-breaking, popular, vital – the signs of a classic.