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Santa Cruz Yachts is a U.S.-based yacht design and manufacturing company. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the A yacht is a recreational boat It designates two rather different classes of Watercraft, sailing and power yachts The offices and production facilities are located on Monterey Bay, California. This article is about the bay near Monterey CA For other uses see Monterey Bay Aquarium, California State University Monterey Bay California ( is a US state on the West Coast of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean.

Contents

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 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 Transpac 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.

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 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 1930's launch, but is packed with modern electronics and jet drive propulsion.

Awards

Models

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

References

See also

External links

Performance Handicap Racing Fleet ( PHRF) is a Handicapping system used in Yacht racing. Sailboat design and manufacturing is done by a number of companies and groups Ronald Dowl Moore (born 5 July 1964 in Chowchilla California) is a two-time Emmy Award -nominated American Screenwriter
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