Carolina Classic Yachts for Sale

Carolina Classic and Albemarle are two Edenton, North Carolina names that ended up in the same building, and it is worth being plain about how. Albemarle is the older and has its own profile here. Carolina Classic was founded separately in 1991 by Mac Privott, on Midway Drive in the same town, and built inboard express sportfishermen: the 25 in 1993, the 28 in 1995, the 35 in 1997 and the 32 in 2004, boats meant for running the Outer Banks inlets and fishing offshore of Hatteras. Scott McLaughlin, who already owned Albemarle, bought Carolina Classic in 2011, and in 2015 Murphy Alternative Investments bought both through a new company, Edenton Boatworks, and marketed them together as Albemarle Boats, The Carolina Classic. The combined operation covers roughly 24 to 41 feet. Albemarle's current model line carries Carolinian and Custom Carolina editions but no boat called a Carolina Classic, so as a brand it has effectively been folded in.

The boats that come up are the 28, 32 and 35 express, and they are worth understanding for what they are: heavy, deep vee, twin diesel inboard fishing boats with a big cockpit, in a market that has moved almost entirely to outboard center consoles. That mismatch is the opportunity, because you get a great deal of sea boat for the money, and the reason is that the running gear and the diesel survey, not the cosmetics, set the price. The support position is much better than most discontinued brands: the Edenton plant is still open under Albemarle, the tooling and the people who ran it are in the same shop, and the Privotts and the long serving workforce stayed through both sales, so a hull question or a part is a real phone call rather than a dead end. You will not get a warranty on a twenty year old boat and no new Carolina Classics are being built, but nobody has walked away from the fleet either. On survey, the list is stringers and engine beds, the fuel tanks and their access, deck and cockpit core around every fitting on a boat that has been fished hard, the hardtop mounts, and the diesels and shafts.