Cape Dory Yachts for Sale

Andrew Vavolotis left Boston Whaler and started Cape Dory in 1963, building 10 foot dinghies in a garage at Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and grew it into one of the larger American sailboat yards at East Taunton. Carl Alberg drew roughly a third of the line and set its character: narrow beam, long overhangs, a sweeping sheer and a full keel with the rudder hung on it, a look borrowed from the Swedish folkboat. The first powerboat, a 28 footer, came in 1968, and when the sailboat market collapsed in the mid 1980s the company leaned harder on trawlers and power cruisers. The 1990 luxury tax finished it, and the company closed in 1992. The designs went to Newport Shipyards in New York, which closed in 1996, and molds and drawings then went north to Robinhood Marine at Georgetown, Maine, Vavolotis's own yard, which offered some as semi custom builds. In 2017 the Cape Dory name and molds were bought by Madison Bay Holdings, which since 2018 has sold new Cape Dory Cruisers power boats out of Florida.

Everything trading under Cape Dory is a used boat, and buyers should be clear that the badge now covers two unrelated things: a Massachusetts built Alberg cruising sailboat from 1963 to 1992, and a new Florida built power boat that shares nothing with it but the name. Nobody honors a warranty on the old boats and there is no factory to call. What there is, and it matters, is Spartan Marine at Georgetown, Maine, the bronze hardware business Cape Dory itself started, still making ports, seacocks, chainplates and rudder fittings of exactly the kind these boats use. That, plus an unusually active owners community, is why a 1970s or 1980s Cape Dory is still a practical boat to own. Survey for age rather than for build quality: the laminate is generally heavy and sound, so look hard at chainplates and their bedding, deck core around fittings, the rudder and its shaft, tanks, and every original seacock and hose, and assume the engine and all the standing rigging are due unless paperwork proves otherwise.