Buddy Davis Yachts for Sale

Buddy Davis was a Wanchese fisherman who went to sea as a mate, had his own boat at nineteen, and built in the off-season like everyone else on the Outer Banks until he turned to it full time in 1980. He built around 300 boats before his death in 2011 at sixty-two, and the flared bow he refined (deep and narrow at the entry, flaring hard above) is the thing every Carolina boat since has been measured against.

That flare exists for one reason: a Cape Hatteras head sea. It throws spray out and lifts the bow rather than burying it, and there is still nothing quite like it in that water. The early hulls are diagonal mahogany plywood sheathed in glass, the later ones all fiberglass, and the BD61 he drew with Donald Blount is considered one of the finest sportfishermen ever built. Survey an older one properly: the wood-cored boats reward a surveyor who knows them.