The yards whose boats are worth waiting for.
Six builders this brokerage knows by hull rather than by brochure — what each one is actually good at, where they build, and what is available now.
Est. 1980Garlington Yachts
Richard Garlington started building in Stuart in 1980, and the yard has spent four decades on one thing: the custom express sportfisherman. The hull is the work of Dan McCarthy, a former U.S. Navy submarine designer, and it is built as a cored composite — glass, Kevlar and carbon over closed-cell foam, resin-infused — which is where the soft, dry ride in a head sea comes from.
- 44 Express
- 49 Express
- 61 Express
- 61 Flybridge
- 71 Flybridge
Est. 1996Spencer Yachts
Captain Paul Spencer had been running charters out of the Outer Banks since he was a boy and took his licence at twenty; in 1996 he started building instead. Spencer runs two facilities — hulls cold-moulded at Manns Harbor, then finished at Wanchese, where the paint shop, metal shop and carpentry are all in-house — turning out fully custom sportfishermen from 37 to 87 feet.
- 37 – 87 feet
- Cold-moulded custom
- Express & convertible
Est. 2018Caymas Boats
Earl Bentz has built and sold three boat companies before this one — Stratos in 1983, Javelin in 1987, Triton in 1996 — and founded Caymas in September 2018 with a team the yard puts at over 1,600 years of combined experience. Every saltwater hull uses Michael Peters' patented Stepped-Vee Ventilated Tunnel, which cuts drag for speed and economy; the 44 CT catamaran was its most ambitious application when it debuted at the 2025 Miami International Boat Show.
- 28 HB
- 30 CT
- 34 CT
- 44 CT Catamaran
Est. 1988Regulator
Joan and Owen Maxwell founded Regulator in 1988 and went to naval architect Lou Codega for a hull that could take the Outer Banks inlets on a bad day. That deep-V is still the point of the boat — predictable and confidence-inspiring where lesser hulls send you home — and the centre console line now runs from 23 to 41 feet.
- 23
- 26
- 28
- 31
- 34
- 35
- 37
- 41
Est. 1949Feadship
Feadship is an acronym — First Export Association of Dutch Shipbuilders — formed in 1949 when a group of yards and De Voogt Naval Architects went to the American market together. It is now Royal Van Lent and De Vries Scheepsbouw, building at Aalsmeer, Makkum, Kaag Island and Amsterdam, and every hull is a one-off: no platforms, no series, drawn from a blank page and built in steel and aluminium.
- Full custom commission
- Steel & aluminium
Est. 1875Lürssen
Friedrich Lürssen was twenty-four when he opened the yard at Bremen on 27 June 1875, and more than 13,000 vessels have followed. Today it is eight facilities in northern Germany and around 1,800 people, building full-custom motor yachts from roughly 50 to 180 metres — the upper end of that range being the 180.65-metre Azzam, the longest yacht in the world.
- Full custom commission
- 50 – 180 m
Set on one of these in particular?
Tell a broker which yard and which model you are after. At this end of the market the right boat is often found before it is listed — and a builder relationship is what makes that happen.