BY LEO TELESMANIC, THE CONCORDIA COMPANY; DECEMBER 1975

In 1920 the Beetle family designed and built a small sail boat for one of the younger members of the family. This was the first Beetle Cat sailboat. Outsiders, impressed with the performance of this boat in New England coastal waters and rivers, were quick to express interest in it. The result was that the Beetle family turned to making catboats, adopting some of the manufacturing techniques they had used in building whaleboats, hereby making the Beetle Cat comparatively inexpensive. As the Beetle Cat gained in popularity it began to appear along the New England and south shores of Cape Cod, on Buzzard's Bay, on Narragansett Bay, at Nantucket Island, and on the Great South Bay of Long Island. Over 4,000 of these boats have been built to date. The design of the original Beetle Cat was taken from the old 20-30 foot catboats that were being used for fishing in shallow waters along Cape Cod and able to cross over the sand bars that were such a menace, particularly at low tide.