Southport Yachts for Sale

Southport was started in North Carolina in 2003 as Southport Boat Works by Alton Herndon and Frank Longino, with a team drawn from Hatteras, Grady-White, Chris-Craft, Rampage, Mako and Cigarette, and the hull commissioned from C. Raymond Hunt Associates. They built 425 boats before the company went under in 2010. In the spring of 2011 Kenway Corporation, a Maine composites firm that began as a wooden boat builder in 1947, bought the tooling and moved production to its plant at Augusta, rebranding the boats Southport. In 2017 the company moved again to its own facility at South Gardiner, Maine, where it still builds. The range restarted at 27, 29 and 33 feet and now runs up through the 30, 33 and 38 to a 42 dual console, sold through dealers across the United States and Puerto Rico.

Used, a Southport is a small production American boat with an unusually good hull under it, which makes it a different proposition from a Grady-White or a Boston Whaler of the same length. It suits somebody who runs offshore in a head sea often enough to pay for the ride, and it will feel wet and slow to warm up compared to a flatter hull inshore. Three generations exist and it matters which you are looking at: the North Carolina boats up to 2010, the Augusta boats from 2011 and the South Gardiner boats from 2017. A boat from before 2010 predates a bankruptcy and two moves, and factory support for it is a courtesy rather than an obligation. The company being alive is the useful part of the story: hull parts, glass and factory advice are available, and dealers can still get components. Survey the usual center console items, the transom and motor bracket, the fuel tank and its foam bed, the rigging tubes, and on an older boat every piece of deck hardware for water in the laminate.