Santa Cruz Yachts was a U.S.-based yacht design and manufacturing company. The offices and production facilities were located in Santa Cruz, California before being moved to Greencove Springs, Florida.
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Santa Cruz Yachts was a U.S.-based yacht design and manufacturing company. The offices and production facilities were located in Santa Cruz, California before being moved to Greencove Springs, Florida.
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 performance 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 (20 m) Merlin was considered unseaworthy by critics, however, the boat proved to be capable of 28 knots (52 km/h) surfing, and won the 1977 Transpacific Yacht Race from California to Hawaii in record time with an average speed of 11 knots (20 km/h) 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 (15 m) 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 (15 m) boat.
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 wood cored hulls. A criticism is that the boats need to be reefed in relatively lower winds, when heading to the wind. 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 (19 m) power boat named the Coastal Flyer, which sells for about $750,000. It is designed to look like a 1930s launch, but is packed with modern electronics and jet drive propulsion.
Recently[ when? ] Santa Cruz Yachts has changed owners and has gone through a renovation period to bring the brand back. Within the last year Santa Cruz has designed a new boat, the SC37. It has received good responses in both the Newport Boat Show 2008 and the Annapolis Boat 2008. Santa Cruz is going to be in the process soon to start designing the SC47. The designer that Santa Cruz is working with now is Tim Kernan.
NOTE: PHRF rating shown is the Northern California Base Rate full keel standard mast unless otherwise described
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Gary Mull was an American yacht designer who created many popular fiberglass sailboats.
The Olson 30 is a sailboat designed by George Olson of Santa Cruz, CA around 1978. Olson was a surfer and surfboard shaper who decided to design a 30' ultra light displacement boat while on a delivery from Honolulu to Santa Cruz on Merlin, a 68' Bill Lee designed and built ultralight sailboat which had competed in the biennial Transpac race in 1977. During this delivery, Olson came up with the idea while sailing with Denis Bassano and Don Snyder, who lent their initials to the prototype's name, SOB 30. The resulting boat was christened Pacific High, and it was launched in 1978.
Bill Lee is the designer of noted ocean racing yachts, and one of the founders of the Santa Cruz school of boatbuilding. Known to many as the Wizard, Lee's designs achieved notoriety in the 1970s, with Chutzpah and Merlin having won the Transpacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu many times. Merlin set and held the course record between 1977 and 1997, making the 1977 crossing in only 8 days, 11 hours and 1 minute.
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The CS 36 Merlin is a Canadian sailboat, that was designed by Tony Castro and first built in 1986. The design is out of production.
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Merlin was designed by Bill Lee. Merlin is considered to an Ultra Light Displacement (ULDB). The racing yacht has won numerous offshore yacht races including the Transpac in 1977 establishing a course record that stood for 20 years. She is a 68 foot long by 12 foot wide monohull weighing in at 25,000 pounds. Merlin is currently owned and raced by William F. "Chip" Merlin, founder of Merlin Law Group, for his team Merlin Yacht Racing.
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The Balboa 22 is an American trailerable sailboat that was designed by W. Shad Turner and William M. Downing as a cruiser and first built in 1977.
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