Brands rise from the ashes

USWatercraft, based in Warren, Rhode Island and the builder and marketer of Alerion Yachts, C&C Yachts, True North Yachts, and North Rip Boats, and a licensed builder of several JBoat models, went into receivership in 2017 by order of the Rhode Island Superior Court in Providence County.

An auction later that year was held to recover value from the assets, with the Alerion brand as the most notable piece to have been picked up. However, what funds were received were not enough to pay legally required employee expenses, past due landlord rent, receiver costs, or creditors.

However, now over a year later, movement of a couple more pieces has occurred:

• Catalina Yachts has acquired True North Yachts which marks Catalina’s entry into the growing market segment of Downeast – style powerboats. The molds for the True North 34 , True North 34 Outboard Express and True North 38 are being moved to the Catalina Yacht plant in Largo, Florida.

• The C&C Yachts brand, which had been resurrected in 2014 by USWatercraft through the launch of the C&C 30 One Design and the C&C Redline 41, has returned to past president Randy Borges under his business Waterline Systems. Borges has re-acquired the exclusive rights to the C&C Yachts name and existing tooling for his business based in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.

Update from Randy Borges: To clarify some facts about C&C Yachts, we did not purchase anything out of the receivership as the C&C Yachts name and brand were never part of USWatercraft or mixed up in the receivership.

USWatercraft did build C&C Yachts under a licensing agreement to use the name, which is similarly now in how my company Squirrel Works LLC (dba: Waterline Systems) has the rights to exclusively use the C&C Yachts name. Our intention, however, is not to build any C&C Yachts but rather provide parts and services to existing C&C Yachts owners. The tooling for the 30 & 41 that USWatercraft developed and owned were part of the receivership, and as far as I know were never purchased and may likely have been disposed of by now.

Looking forward, we are plugging away here, very happy to be solely focused on building Alerions for the new brand owner and providing parts and service to the many Alerion, J/Boat, and C&C Yachts owners and all the others we have been servicing for years.