Crescent Yachts for Sale

Jack Charles was a trucking man who bought himself a custom yacht, decided he could do it better and started Crescent Beach Boatbuilders in 1985 at Crescent Beach on Boundary Bay, just north of the Washington line. The first boats were American hulls, Westport's among them, finished in British Columbia and sold on speculation. The order book grew, the company moved to a purpose built yard at Richmond on the Fraser River, and Jack Sarin drew the expandable molds that let one tool produce several lengths. Then it came apart: the family sold to investors in the early 2000s, building stopped around 2004 on an unhelpful exchange rate, a second group took it on in 2005, a 144 foot tri deck stalled when the buyer defaulted, and the yard closed again in 2012. Tim Charles, Jack's grandson, had meanwhile built up Platinum Marine on the same site doing refits with many of the original craftspeople. He bought the Crescent name and its intellectual property back in 2015, launched the Crescent 145 at Fort Lauderdale in 2016, and now builds from about 108 to 164 feet in six enclosed bays with a 330 ton Travelift. The 50 meter Crescent 164 is described as the largest private yacht built in Canada.

Most Crescents on the brokerage market are the 1990s and early 2000s fiberglass motor yachts of roughly 100 to 130 feet: heavy, quiet, properly crewed boats with large engine rooms, built semi custom, which means the layout, the machinery and the finish differ from hull to hull and the specification matters more than the model number. Around three quarters of the yard's customers have always been American, so these are boats that were built for this market and most of them spent their working lives between Seattle, Alaska and Mexico rather than the Mediterranean. That has two useful consequences. Canada runs on the same 60Hz supply as the United States, so there is none of the shore power conversion that comes with a European yacht, and a Canadian built yacht can qualify for duty free entry under the North American trade agreement, though that turns on the certificate of origin and the customs entry, so have a customs broker confirm it rather than assuming. Support is better than the yard's stop start history suggests: the current company is under the founder's family, holds the original tooling and drawings and employs people who built the older boats, so a pre 2012 Crescent has somewhere knowledgeable to go even though its warranty expired long ago.