Camper & Nicholsons Yachts for Sale

Francis Amos opened a yard at Gosport, across the harbor from the naval dockyard at Portsmouth, in 1782. His great nephew William Camper took over in 1824, Ben Nicholson joined as an apprentice in 1842 and eventually ran it, and the firm took the name Camper and Nicholsons. Charles Nicholson, designing from 1887, made it famous: the J Class yachts Shamrock V, Velsheda, Endeavour and Endeavour II all came out of Gosport. The boats an American buyer actually meets are from much later. From 1963 the company sold fiberglass cruising yachts under the Nicholson name, with Halmatic molding the hulls and decks and Gosport finishing them, and built more than 1,400 of them: the Nicholson 32, of which 369 were made between 1963 and 1981, the 35 at 228, the 38 at 134, the 33 at 120, and 27, 29, 31, 42, 43, 48, 58 and 70 footers above and below. Ownership passed through Crest Securities in 1972, a management buyout in 1981, Cammell Laird in 1990 and the Nautor group in 2001. Series production stopped in 1989 and shipbuilding at Gosport ended in 2005. The name survives on a superyacht brokerage and management business and on a marina company, neither of which builds boats.

There is no builder behind this badge any more, which matters less than usual because these were conventional heavily built boats with ordinary British hardware, and rather more than usual because they are old: a Nicholson 42 or 48 from the 1970s or 1980s is a fifty year old yacht. Survey it as one. Chainplates and their bedding, deck core around every fitting, the rudder stock and bearings, keel bolts, the original tanks and every hose and seacock, and expect engine and standing rigging to be due. These were English boats sold in England, so check the electrics before anything else: 220 volt 50 hertz wiring, British shore power fittings, a British calorifier and charger and imperial plumbing are all common, and the cost of putting a boat properly onto 120 volt 60 hertz American shore power is a real figure. Confirm that US duty has been paid and the title or documentation is clean, because boats brought over privately sometimes are not settled. What you are buying is a hull and a rig designed for the English Channel: heavy, dry, narrow by modern standards, with small ports and a deep cockpit, which is exactly right offshore and cramped at anchor. Sail one before you decide which of those matters more to you.