Scarborough Yachts for Sale

Ricky Scarborough was a Wanchese crabber and duck guide who built shallow draft skiffs for other watermen, better than a hundred of them, before he spent a few weeks in 1976 with Omie Tillett learning how a sport fishing boat goes together. He incorporated Scarborough Boat Works in 1977 and started on 22 to 36 foot center consoles, built his first big boat in 1981, a 44 footer called Poor Girl, and worked up through Sushi at 50 feet in 1987 and Eye Roller at 67 in 1995. The yard has built close to 100 sportfishermen. Ricky Jr. came into the business, took it over when his father retired, and brought CAD, CNC routing and cold molded construction with him, things his father had no use for. The shop is still at Wanchese and still building custom, up to 75 feet.

On a Scarborough the construction is the whole question, and it depends entirely on the year. The older boats are wood: juniper planked on frames, later juniper with diagonal plywood laid over it, built right side up by eye. The modern boats are cold molded over a jig, built upside down and flipped. Both can be excellent and neither should be surveyed by somebody who only knows fiberglass. On a wooden hull that means fastenings, frames, the horn timber, engine beds, the garboard and the whole bilge, and a moisture meter read by a surveyor who knows what a healthy plank on frame boat reads like. On a cold molded hull it means the epoxy encapsulation and every penetration through it, because water that gets into the laminate and stays there is the failure mode. These are one off boats, so there is no parts list and no model history to lean on: what you get instead is a yard that is still in Wanchese and still run by the family that built your boat, which on a custom hull is worth more than any warranty.