Carroll Yachts for Sale

Listings that say Carroll mean Carroll Marine Ltd., founded in 1984 by Barry Carroll, a Naval Academy graduate, and his wife Janice. The yard started at Warren, Rhode Island and moved to Bristol, growing to a 20,000 square foot shop with 30 to 40 people turning out 30 to 50 boats a year at its peak and something over 700 hulls in total. It built German Frers racer cruisers in the 33 to 45 foot range, a run of Tripp designs, and then the Bruce Farr one designs it is remembered for. The market contracted after 2000 and Carroll Marine closed at the end of June 2002. The Carrolls sold the assets, placed key employees with the buyer and settled with suppliers, and the boatbuilding complex went to Outerlimits, a high performance powerboat builder that had been one of their customers.

These are racing boats, so buy them the way racers do. A Farr 40 or a Mumm 30 is worth roughly what its class fleet is worth: where the class is still active the boats hold value and there is a known market, and where it has faded they get cheap quickly. Ask for the class measurement certificate and the weighing history before anything else, then look at the keel and its attachment, the rudder and bearings, any repaired impact or grounding damage, and core or laminate problems from a hard racing life. The sail inventory is a large part of the price and a large part of what you will spend next. Interiors are minimal by design, so nobody should buy one expecting a cruising boat. There has been no factory since 2002, but the class associations, the original design offices and the New England composite yards that have worked on these hulls for thirty years are the real support, and for this kind of boat they are better than a factory.