Augusto “Kiko” Villalon
The best journalistic source is one who knows full clear details of the story you are reporting. Ideally, they’ve been around from before the full arc of the narrative commences, they have been attentively and intelligently observant, and the quality of their recall of details is beyond reproach. It helps immensely if they are a patient teacher and engaging raconteur. It’s an ideal I learned about early in journalism school and dismissed as an impossible standard as soon as I got to work.
Courtesy ABYC Kiko and Gordie Villalon, a familiar sight together at IBEX and ABYC’s Standards Week, were enthusiastic supporters of innovation in boatbuilding.
I met Augusto “Kiko” Villalon and his wife Gordie in the early aughts having been invited to visit aboard their Brewer 44, Alfin (one of his many boats so named) anchored near the magazine offices in Brooklin, Maine. They were waiting for a repair part to be delivered before continuing their cruise downeast. Then Publisher Carl Cramer and I rowed out through the warm foggy harbor guided by the mellow smoke of Kiko’s Cuban cigar. In the broad ranging and personal dinner conversation that followed we were delivered an unselfconsciously comprehensive history of the evolution of modern boatbuilding in America from a man who had seen much of it firsthand.
We started with sailing, and Kiko’s youth in 1930’s Cuba with Bahamian sloop and building a Seabird yawl with his father. Next, his migration to the U.S. in the 1960s where fate led him to work for Jack Riggleman at Arkansas Traveler, building affordable runabouts and small cruisers in aluminum and composites. Then on to engineering at Caravelle and Sea Crest and the evolution that led to his founding of tooling and prototyping company Marine Concepts in 1975. There he was in the catbird’s seat, building molds for everyone with fresh ideas and new models in the industry: Regal, Chaparral, Ebbtide, Monark, Glastron, Thunder Craft, Wellcraft, Chris-Craft, Correct Craft, Aquasport, Crestliner, Mako, Hunter, Carver, and some obscure players like Hyundai and Porsche. It’s no exaggeration that he did work for nearly every production boatbuilder in North America from the 1970s until he sold the company in the mid-90s.
I was also introduced to Kiko’s relentless and articulate advocacy for the American Boat and Yacht Council ABYC, where he’d been an active member since 1962. His recollection of the founding of the council—how builders and designers came together to raise the bar of boating safety despite incentives to ignore shortcomings—and the work with government regulators to vet and create standards for emerging technologies through the decades was invaluable to a young boating journalist who had ample sea time but zero hours in technical advisory meetings.
Courtesy ABYC Villalon receives an Industry Icon award from ABYC President John Adey in 2024.
Sitting in Alfin’s cockpit sharing his concerns about higher-powered outboards and recent changes in stability calculations he embodied why standards development is a game for well-informed mature minds doing thoughtful, collaborative, intellectually and morally honest work in the public interest. It’s exactly the same skill and character set of an ideal journalistic source, a role Kiko would play for me and this magazine until his death October 8, 2025.
What I didn’t know yet when I rowed ashore that night, and what they don’t tell you in journalism school, is that if you are supremely fortunate the best sources can also make the best friends. Thank you Kiko. Abrazos amigo.
(For a full profile of Kiko Villalon see Dan Spurr’s “Out of Cuba” in Professional BoatBuilder No. 114, page 94.)
