Roger:

The following is excerpt from a bio on Bill Crealock, found he

http://www.clipper-sailor.net/crealock.html

I haven't read the entire "Westsail 32" thread - sorry if this is
redundant, but seems to the point of your question.

MW +++

Around 1965 the Westsail saga began with a builder named Larry Kendall,
who came to Bill and asked if there was anything out there in the way
of a market for cruising boats. Bill thought Larry might be able to
sell "a dozen or so." Larry decided on the Atkin Thistle, a husky
32-foot double-ender with a flush deck, and began tooling. After years
of work, turmoil and bankruptcy, the plans and tooling were picked up
by Snyder and Lynn Vic, who named the boat Westsail and began serious
production. The flush deck of Atkin's original design found little
appeal, so a trunk cabin version modeled after another Atkins design
called Eric was created. Crealock drew the rig and some of the
interior, before long, many people credited him with the hull design as
well. "I did not touch the lines," he assures me. "We wanted to
keep the basic Atkin design." Thereafter, "Time" magazine ran a
lengthy piece on cruising as a lifestyle and one of the boats featured
was a Westsail. The corporation hit big time and talked to Bill about a
larger boat. This led to the Westsail 42 and 43 (identical hulls), one
of the first boats based on the input of potential buyers. "Strong"
was the operative word, and "overkill" best describes the hull
layup. Lookers loved to thump on the topsides at boat shows, and
salesmen eagerly showed core samples virtually inches thick. But after
a massive advertising campaign and a frenzy of building, the fast rise
led to a steady decline despite a string of reincarnations.