page_title: Santa Cruz Yachts
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Santa Cruz Yachts / History
caption_attribution_description: English: SC70 RETRO prior to the start of the 2013 NHYC Newport to Cabo San Lucas race Photo D Ramey Logan
context_page_description: Santa Cruz Yachts was a U.S.-based yacht design and manufacturing company. The offices and production facilities were located in Santa Cruz, California before being moved to Greencove Springs, Florida.
context_section_description: Santa Cruz Yachts, founded by Bill Lee, has a 35-year history of designing and building sailing yachts.  The emphasis has been on ultra-light high performance racing designs generally offering amenities for long distance voyages.  Santa Cruz Yachts has produced award-winning designs and these boats have performed well in racing including long distance ocean racing.
  In 1977 the 66-foot (20 m) Merlin was considered unseaworthy by critics, however, the boat proved to be capable of 28 knots (52 km/h) surfing, and won the 1977 Transpacific Yacht Race from California to Hawaii in record time with an average speed of 11 knots (20 km/h) over 2,250 miles.  In 1981 Merlin again won the Transpac, but this time seven of the top ten finishes were the Santa Cruz 50, a scaled down production version of Merlin.  A 50-foot (15 m) Santa Cruz yacht weighs about 16,000 pounds with half of that weight in the ballast of the keel; this is very light compared to the 30,000 pounds normally associated with a 50-foot (15 m) boat.
caption: SC70 RETRO prior to the start of the 2013 NHYC Newport to Cabo San Lucas race
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