Antares sailboats: two unrelated builders share one name
Two very different boats carry the Antares name in the used market. One is a bluewater cruising catamaran designed by Ted Clements with roots at PDQ Yachts of Whitby, Ontario, later rebuilt into an independent, Argentina-based builder. The other is a 17-foot trailerable daysailer built beginning in 1987 by a small Florida yard with no connection to the catamaran company beyond the reused model name. This page treats them as the separate histories they are.
The Antares 17: a different boat entirely
The Antares 17 was one of several trailerable sailboats built by Sovereign Yacht Co. of Florida, first built in 1987. Sovereign-branded boats were produced over roughly 20 years across three related entities — Sovereign Yacht Co., Inc., Custom Fiberglass Products of Florida, Inc., and Sovereign America, Inc. — none of which had any tie to the catamaran builder described below.
Origins and ownership
The catamaran side of the Antares story starts at PDQ Yachts in Whitby, Ontario, where Dr. Harvey Griggs, Alan Slater, and designer Ted Clements shaped a serious bluewater cruising catamaran, as Antares's own history describes it, for owners who wanted to cross oceans rather than charter by the week. In January 2008, Rob Poirier — previously a vice president at PDQ — and Clements bought the Antares catamaran molds from PDQ after the company chose to focus solely on power catamarans, launching Antares Yachts as an independent builder. Robert Perry, writing in Sailing Magazine's "Perry on Design" column in 2009, described the group as formerly known as PDQ, its new 44i now built in Buenos Aires, with 27 of the original model built by that point. Antares's own account frames the move from Canada to Argentina, which it dates to 2007-2009, as preservation rather than reinvention. Cruising World's profile of the company placed its headquarters in South Carolina by 2015, with the factory remaining in Argentina.
The designer
Ted Clements's marine career began as a mechanic at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club. He later helped establish Harbour Marine, a repair and construction yard that was eventually purchased by C&C Yachts and folded into its repair division. PDQ hired him in the late 1990s to study the feasibility of a trawler-style power catamaran, and in 2000 he began drawing the 42-foot design that became the predecessor of the Antares 44, building on PDQ's sailing-catamaran experience and input from PDQ's existing owners. Clements remains head of design at Antares Catamarans.
Construction and the model line
Antares's own history credits the original PDQ 44 platform with the features it says still define the boats: a protected 360-degree cockpit, skegged rudders, shaft drives, and a livable three-cabin layout, which the builder dates to 2004. From there, per that same account, the 44i extended the platform, the 44 GS opened the living spaces, and the 44 GT brought further build-quality refinements — each step keeping the same underlying cruising logic. Antares's own current account lists the 44 GT alongside the newer Antares 46 and 46 Hybrid as continuing that philosophy. Each catamaran is hand-built, with Cruising World's 2015 profile describing a yard launching about five to six boats a year. New owners face a two-to-three-year build wait, during which Antares runs a program called Antares U to teach them the boat's systems in advance.
Who Antares is for
The catamaran side of Antares suits buyers drawn to a single hull lineage that has run continuously from PDQ's original design through the GT and 46 models, built in small numbers by a yard descended directly from that Whitby, Ontario engineering pedigree. Buyers hunting a small trailerable daysailer under the same name should instead look to the unrelated Antares 17 from Sovereign Yacht Co. — a different boat, a different builder, a different era.
