Catalina Morgan Yachts for Sale

Catalina Morgan is not a third builder. It is the badge Catalina Yachts used on boats it built at the Morgan plant at Largo, Florida after buying Morgan Yachts there in May 1984, and the three boats listed under it show the whole arc. The 1987 Classic 41 is the old Morgan Out Island 41, which Catalina kept in production and reworked with a deeper fin keel and a skeg hung rudder in place of the original long shoal keel and attached rudder, building about 150 of them to 1991. The 1997 38 is the Catalina Morgan 38, introduced in November 1992 as the first genuinely new Morgan design in over a decade, a center cockpit aft cabin cruiser drawn in house by Gerry Douglas, of which fewer than a hundred were built. The 2005 45 footer is the Catalina Morgan 440, a raised deck saloon boat also by Gerry Douglas with hull input from Nelson Marek, 83 built from 2004, offered with a 5 foot 6 inch wing keel or a 7 foot 2 inch fin. If you are researching the earlier St. Petersburg boats designed by Charley Morgan himself, the Morgan page on this site covers those, and the Catalina page covers the company that built these.

For a buyer that history is the useful part, because it tells you what each of these boats actually is. The Classic 41 is a Morgan hull with better manners, so it sails noticeably closer to the wind than an original Out Island while keeping the enormous, plain, easily fixed interior that made the model a charter fleet staple. The 38 and the 440 are Catalinas with a Morgan badge: Catalina engineering, Catalina hardware and Catalina's approach to systems, aimed at a couple living aboard rather than at a crowd. That matters for parts. Deck hardware, ports, hatches and rigging on the 38 and 440 are the same ordinary production items Catalina used across its range, and the Catalina owner community is very large and very good at documenting this, so information is easy to come by. None of these is still built, and Catalina itself paused production before a new owner announced a restart, so do not count on any factory support or warranty. Survey accordingly. On the 38 and 440, deck hardware, window and port leaks are a known complaint, so check every bedding and the bulkhead and headliner behind it. On the Classic 41 check the rudder and skeg, the chainplates, the deck core and the tankage, and remember a lot of these boats came out of charter. All three are shoal enough for Florida, the Keys and the Bahamas, which is who they suit.