Mark 3 Mk 1 Mk 1
Origin Two Canadian sailors; George Cuthbertson, a mechanical engineer, and George Cassian, an aircraft designer, then unemployed following the demise of the
Avro Arrow jet project, Cuthbertson initially held 75% interest in the company and later increased Cassian's share to a third. They started by designing a small number of steel and wooden boats, with Cuthbertson doing the preliminary lines and calculations and Cassian the interior plans and details. The boat, named
Red Jacket, was built by
Bruckmann Manufacturing of
balsa wood sandwiched between two layers of
fibreglass. She was launched in May 1966 and won 11 of 13 starts that summer. That winter,
Red Jacket headed south and won a number of races on the famed
Southern Ocean Racing Conference (SORC), competing against more than 85 of the best racers of the day. Connolly went back the next year, and
Red Jacket was, in 1968, the first Canadian boat to win the SORC. The sailing community at large paid attention and demand for the C&C designs in production skyrocketed. In 1969 the customs tariff to import yachts from the US into Canada was 17.5% and C&C achieved sales of $3.9 million its first year. Dealers found it easy to sell a product with a strong reputation for reliability and high performance. But the death of George Cassian in 1979 cast its pall over affairs. Every Canadian
Canada's Cup contender between 1969 and 1978 was a C&C product. The Canada's Cup winner in 1978 was a C&C design, the
Two Ton class Evergreen, owned by Don Green with
Hans Fogh at the helm. The design was a radical, dinghy-like, 41-foot boat, designed with the aim of winning the trophy. The catastrophic failure of the mast during a "stiff breeze" on
Lake Ontario while on a shakedown cruise may have been indicative of design issues, Upon reflection over the
1979 Fastnet race in which he participated, Skipper Green later said that
Evergreen "never should have gone to England" for the
Admiral's Cup, which is the destination of most Canada's Cup winners.
Canadian Yachting magazine stated fifteen years later that "few yachts have created more controversy than"
Evergreen, and that "its extreme design and controversial features ruffled feathers around the world." After the competition that year, the rule books were rewritten to preclude safety problems like those raised by the design of
Evergreen, and as a result, C&C never received another commission for a Canada's Cup yacht.
Sale of company Cuthbertson presided over the works until 1981. The directors together owned 65 percent of the existing 404,000 shares, He wanted novel construction materials and novel construction processes to replace the balsa-wood core structures that had been the staple of the firm until the management changeover. The 41' boat that resulted from these instructions,
Silver Shadow III, "decided not to participate" in the 1983 Admiral's Cup, an all-time high for Canada. and the firm experienced its racing nadir, with the poor performance at SORC of the company-backed custom 44
Silver Shadow IV,
C&C Yachts International In 1992, there was a temporary reprieve. All assets of C&C Yachts were purchased by the Hong Kong based shipping magnates, Anthony Koo and Frank Chow, who then operated the new organization as
C&C Yachts International.
Niagara-on-the-Lake factory fire - April 1994 On 21 April 1994 a fire broke out in the factory, completely destroying the production line, most of the tooling, records and plans. The 1:30 a.m. blaze tore through C&C's production sheds and block-long warehouse that housed the production equipment and fibreglass materials. The fire destroyed 40 molds and the boats currently under construction, including three C&C 51s. The company's insurance only covered a small portion of the loss and in 1996 the land, boat tooling and trademarks were all sold.
The Jackett era In 1996 the C&C brand and its intellectual materials were acquired by
Fairport Yachts, builders of
Tartan Yachts, and moved to
Fairport, Ohio, where the company started the production of a new line of C&C yachts. These new boats, designed by Tartan's in-house designer Tim Jackett, were intended to preserve the design characteristics and performance of the C&C brand. Starting in 1997, C&C Yachts introduced four new models, the
C&C 99,
110,
115, and
121, producing over 150 boats under the new leadership. In 2002, C&C built its entire line with post-cured, foam-cored epoxy hulls with uni-directional "E"-glass and carbon local reinforcements. Beginning in 2004, C&C started equipping all models with carbon-fiber masts as standard equipment.
US Watercraft era and closure In September 2013,
US Watercraft announced that it had bought the rights to the C&C brand from Tartan and would take over manufacturing of all new C&C models starting in the fall of 2013. US Watercraft entered
receivership in July 2017 to sell its assets, but by the summer of 2018 no buyer had been found, the C&C website had been blanked and production of the last two models, the
Redline 41 and
C&C 30 One Design ended. ==Cuthbertson archive==