Pacific Seacraft

L

lloyds

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C Dory Year
1996
C Dory Model
22 Cruiser
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undecided
Since there are a lot of sailors and former sailors on this site I thought I would pass on an interesting piece of news to those that still think of sailing. Pacific Seacraft, a builder of some fine heavy duty sailboats that have cruised the world has recently entered bankruptcy. Some guy from North Carolina traveled to california with the intent to bid on the companies assets at court auction. He was the lucky bidder. All tools, equipment, molds, plans, and five hulls, all for $85,000. He had it all trucked to North Carolina and is going to put them back into production. The guy got a real deal. It was sad to hear they had gone out of business as their boats were both beautiful and extremely seaworthy.
 
Back in the late 70's most of the S. Calif. boat building companies went out of business. There were only a few which survived--including Catalina and Williard. Pacific Sea Craft was also one of those who survived. Agree that they were very well built and detailed boats. Unfortunately the costs were more than the traffic would bear--and the costs of doing business in S. Calif. was part of the demise of the country. CARB regs, plus the other taxes make this type of business difficult to make profitable in that area.

Pacific Sea Craft also built the Nordhavn 35 trawlers for a peroid of time. As I recollect, the new owner (Stephen Brodie who is a marine archiologist) used over 20 eighteen wheelers and spent more to transport the materials to N. Carolina in Sept, than he paid for the materials and molds. I wish them well.
 
I loved their little 32' pilothouse cutter at one time...but alas, I never bought that boat. Sad to hear they couldn't keep it running, but not really surprised.
 
We owned and lived aboard a Pacific Seacraft 20' Flicka for three years -- sailed her around the Great Loop and traveled over 13,000 nmiles aboard our little little La Joya. Great boat and she served us well. Sorry to hear the company went bankrupt, but hope those marvelous hulls will still be built and sailed.
 
Bob's post giving the reason boat building couldn't survive in california probably explains why the reverse is true in North Carolina. Very business friendly. Supposedly there are over 100 boat building firms in North Carolina.
 
El and Bill":3i27mcrj said:
We owned and lived aboard a Pacific Seacraft 20' Flicka for three years -- sailed her around the Great Loop and traveled over 13,000 nmiles aboard our little little La Joya. Great boat and she served us well. Sorry to hear the company went bankrupt, but hope those marvelous hulls will still be built and sailed.
Click to expand...

I did a little reading on the Flicka 20 owners website and came up with this morsel of familiar advice from Jobst Vandrey (which could have just as well been written by El and Bill):

" I still wanted to limit myself to the smallest boat possible for the desired destinations. My guiding principles were that small is beautiful, simple is better, and less is more. As many others have said, a small boat and a suitcase full of money is much better than a 40 footer tied to The Bank. As a result, in February of 2000, I purchased a 1989 Pacific Seacraft Flicka 20"

KISS, a beautiful philosophy! Works with a C-Dory too!

Joe. :teeth :thup
 
I have always been an admirer of the Pacific Seacraft line, especially the Flicka and Dana 24. I sea-trialed and wrote about both during my tenure at Great Lakes Sailor magazine in the late '80's.

I also spent an afternoon at the factory when it was in full swing while I was making the rounds of the California sailboat builders trying to sell ad space for the magazine. After the typical tour, I spent at least an hour watching a true craftsman install teak gunwale trim by using "butterfly" inserts to join pieces of teak. His work was truly incredible.

I hope the company and their well-found designs will live again.

Nick
"Valkyrie"
 
Georgia, N and S Carolina are becomming the boat building meccas. Some Florida companies have moved there. I suspect that the new Pacific Sea Craft will be successful.
 
Kalama's two most famous businesses while I've lived here are/were Pyramid Ale, (which has sense moved to just north of Seatte) & Northstar Yachts (see link below). Years ago, when Tollycraft folded some of the key people involved realized that, unlike the market for typical pleasure cruisers, the demand for large 65 ft. -- 100+ ft. high end yachts was not necessarily connected to the fickle U.S. economy. So they formed Northstar and turned out some really nice boats. When the Besame' was launched (4.6 million $$$ I think) the owners had a big Marimba Band and threw a two day party.... (big news for our small town). Well, like so many other companies, Northstar has decided to move production overseas, though some final rigging may still be done here.

Oh well, the salmon fishing is still good. In fact the upriver spring chinook run this year is supposed to be over 210,000 fish, compared to last year's 75,000. And that is finest tasting salmon on the planet (to include Copper River). C.W.

http://www.northstaryachts.com/
 
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