Goetz Yachts for Sale

Eric Goetz read anthropology at Brown, sailed professionally and started Eric Goetz Custom Sail Boats at Bristol, Rhode Island in 1975. He was among the first to build in carbon fiber to take weight out of a racing hull, and the yard went on to build America's Cup, Admiral's Cup and Maxi Worlds winners, along with powerboats, tenders and rowing shells, better than 200 boats in all. About 100 people worked there at the peak. A new 42,000 square foot plant opened in September 2007, the recession arrived, an international client canceled an 85 foot racing boat that was half built, refinancing failed, and in January 2009 the company went into receivership and all 75 remaining staff were laid off. Goetz bought the assets back from the receiver that March for 450,000 dollars and restarted as Goetz Custom Technologies with a semi custom G58 to a German Frers design. The Bristol operation today is Goetz Composites, doing carbon work for other builders and for clients outside boating as much as complete yachts.

There is no such thing as a Goetz model. Each one is a one off, and the hull was built in Bristol to somebody else's drawings, usually as prepreg carbon laid into a female mold and cured in an oven, which is why they are so light and why they are surveyed differently from anything else. A moisture meter tells you very little. What tells you something is the paperwork and the ultrasound: the laminate schedule, the engineering, the cure records, the tank test if there was one, and a tap or ultrasonic survey by somebody who genuinely reads carbon. Concentrate on load paths rather than on the skin, so chainplates, ring frames, the keel structure and its floors, rudder bearings, and any repair, impact or lightning history, which on a carbon boat needs an engineer rather than an opinion. Nobody honors a warranty written before 2009, but support is better than that sounds: the Bristol shop is still there under the Goetz Composites name doing exactly this work, and southern New England has half a dozen yards that can too. Expect a thin resale market, because a unique boat has no book value and a small pool of buyers, and expect the rig and sail inventory to be a very large part of what the boat costs you next.