Manta Yachts for Sale

The line started with the Manta 38, a Pat Reischmann design that came out of St. Petersburg, Florida in the mid 1990s. The 40 that followed was the 38 stretched, with more headroom, and it was built for Manta by Endeavour Catamaran Corporation at Clearwater from 1995 to 1999. Manta then took production in house, opened its own yard and built the 42 from 2000 to 2008, more than 90 of them across four marks, moving to Sarasota along the way. A 44 foot power cat was developed in 2007. The last boat was a 42 Mark IV in 2008 and there has been no production since, despite talk of a restart around 2013.

Mantas were built for owners who were going to live on the boat and go somewhere, not for charter fleets, and it shows in the layout and the gear: owner's version accommodation, heavy ground tackle, a self tacking jib on a Camber Spar so two people can handle it, collision bulkheads forward, and stub keels instead of daggerboards giving under four feet of draft and the ability to take the ground. A fair number have circumnavigated. As an American built cruising cat of that size it has few peers on the used market, which holds the prices up. There is no company, no warranty and no parts supply: the owners' association is the whole support structure, and anything structural will be a custom repair. Establish first which boat you are looking at, a Clearwater built 40 or a Sarasota built 42, because they are different builds by different hands. Then survey the cored laminate for wet core, the hull to deck joint, the molded keels and their leading edges for grounding damage, the rudder stocks and bearings, the bridgedeck, chainplates and the rig, and budget for standing rigging on any boat that still has its original.