Santa Cruz Yachts

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Santa Cruz Yachts is a U.S.-based yacht design and manufacturing company. The offices and production facilities are located on Monterey Bay, California.

Contents 1 History 2 Santa Cruz today 3 Awards 4 Models 5 References 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] History

Santa Cruz Yachts, founded by Bill Lee, has a 35-year history of designing and building sailing yachts. The emphasis has been on ultra-light high perfomance racing designs generally offering amenities for long distance voyages. Santa Cruz Yachts has produced award-winning designs and these boats have performed well in racing including long distance ocean racing.

In 1977 the 66 foot Merlin was considered unseaworthy by critics, however, the boat proved to be capable of 28 knots surfing, and won the 1977 Transpac race from California to Hawaii in record time with an average speed of 11 knots over 2,250 miles. In 1981 Merlin again won the Transpac, but this time seven of the top ten finishes were the Santa Cruz 50, a scaled down production version of Merlin. A 50 foot Santa Cruz yacht weighs about 16,000 pounds with half of that weight in the ballast of the keel; this is very light compared to the 30,000 pounds normally associated with a 50 foot boat.

[edit] Santa Cruz today

The Santa Cruz line has matured into a niche market of large, fast, and comfortable boats; however all this comes with a substantial price tag. Santa Cruz boats are made to order so the roughly $600,000 base price of a Santa Cruz 52 can climb to well over $1 million; even ten year old Santa Cruz 52's are fetching a half million dollars. The newer Santa Cruz 53 with a base price of about $850,000 is substantially a more luxiourious and heavier adaptation of the 52.

A technique used to make these boats ultra-light is balsa foam cored hulls; however there is criticism of the technique as once water saturates the balsa the hull is not practically repairable without disassembly of the hull. Although Santa Cruz designs the hull to minimize the risk of water intrusion, a crash, grounding, or poor maintenance could destroy a hull. Another criticism is that the boats need to be reefed in relatively lower winds, when heading to the wind, and may not be able to point to wind as effectively as other designs. Proponents argue that the Santa Cruz more than makes up for this deficiency in the downwind leg of a race.

Santa Cruz has recently begun manufacturing a 61 foot power boat named the Coastal Flyer, which sells for about $750,000. It is designed to look like a 1930's launch, but is packed with modern electronics and jet drive propulsion.

[edit] Awards

• Sailing World's Boat of the Year, the Santa Cruz 52

[edit] Models

NOTE: PHRF rating shown is the Northern California Base Rate full keel standard mast unless otherwise described

• SC27 - PHRF 135

• SC33 - PHRF 114

• SC40 - PHRF 48

• SC44 -

• SC50 - PHRF -6

• SC52 - PHRF -15 (Southern California Bouy Rating) - Sailing World Magazine Overall "Boat Of The Year" winner in 1996

• SC52T - PHRF -30 (Southern California Bouy Rating)

• SC53C -

• SC70 - PHRF -66

• Coastal Flyer 61 (motor launch)

[edit] References

• Best boats to Build or Buy - Ference Mate - Albatross Publishing House 1982
• Fibreglass Boats 3rd edition, by Hugo Du Plessis A&C Black (publisher) 1996 ISBN 0-7136-4290-4
• Power & Motor Yacht Magazine, Santa Cruz Coastal Flyer — By Tim Clark — July 2002
• Yacht Magazine, Coastal Flyer 39, by Dennis Caprio Published: May 2002
• Sailing World Magazine, Boat of the Year Winners (1985-2003) August 26, 2003 by The Editors
• CNN Money Magazine (online), By John Tayman August 1, 2003
• Boater's Life -- Wepage -- Company Profile Santa Cruz Yachts
• Sailnet -- Perry on Design -- Review of Santa Cruz 63
• YRA of San Francisco Bay (Northern California PHRF rating chart)
• PHRF of Southern California
• Santa Cruz 27 National Class Association

[edit] See also

• List of sailboat designers and manufacturers

[edit] External links

• Santa Cruz Yachts Website