Northshore sailboats: one name, two unrelated builders
Search for a used Northshore sailboat and you will turn up two unrelated boatbuilders that happened to share a name. Most of the Northshore-branded boats on this site are Sydney-built: an Australian numbered lineup, from the 27 through the 46 and later the Jutson-designed 369 and 370, all traceable to a company founded by John Buck. A second, entirely separate business also traded as Northshore Yachts, out of a shipyard on England's south coast, building an unrelated range of Southerly, Fisher, and Vancouver sailboats that each have their own dedicated pages here. The two companies never shared tooling, ownership, or history - only the name.
Origins and ownership
The Australian company behind most of this site's Northshore listings began with John Buck, born in Hastings, England, in 1940, who arrived in Australia with little to his name and built a boatbuilding business out of fibreglass repair work - a trade in which, per MySailing's profile of the company, he discovered a medium for both efficiency and design. Buck began exploring moulds and fibreglass in the late 1960s, and Northshore Yachts has manufactured sailboats in Australia since 1973. Sail-World credited the company with more than 750 Northshore yachts sailing around the country by 2006 - more than any other production boat built there or imported - the same year Heath Walters, managing director and major shareholder of Northshore Yachting Services, acquired the company with the backing of private equity investors; the enlarged operation then worked in conjunction with BoatMate Shipwright Services.
An entirely separate company also traded as Northshore Yachts. Formed in 1971 by Bryan Moffatt, it was purchased by Lester Abbott in 2003; Practical Boat Owner reported that Abbott invested heavily in expanding the Southerly range the yard built, adding two new factory buildings, the second of which was opened by Princess Anne in 2010. This UK company - not the Australian one - held the mouldings and intellectual property rights to the Southerly, Fisher, and Vancouver yacht brands, each with its own page on this site, and separately took over MG Yachts, whose MGC27 was for a time sold through Northshore as well.
The UK yard's later history was considerably rockier. Yachting Monthly reported that as the company entered receivership, an industry source described its future as "not looking great," with directors negotiating terms with creditors, including customers who had already paid deposits on ordered yachts. Per Practical Boat Owner, the operation folded a second time roughly 13 months after that earlier receivership, a collapse that cost 50 of the 165 jobs at Itchenor Shipyard and its moulding operation in Havant; Chris Stephens of FRP Advisory, who had handled the earlier case, was again appointed receiver, while the land and buildings at Itchenor - owned separately by Sunchalk Ltd - stayed in place. Even before creditors met over that second collapse, the Itchenor site had already reopened for business as Northshore Shipyard Ltd. Marine Industry News reported that the Trafalgar Group completed its acquisition of that shipyard, announced in July 2024 - a roughly four-acre site with a deep-water pontoon, two slipways, a café, and about 60,000 square feet of commercial buildings.
The designers
The Australian lineup carries two principal design credits, a generation apart. Buck's collaboration with Hank Kauffman produced what MySailing described as ocean-ready confidence for Australian cruisers and racers, most notably the Northshore 38, designed on commission from Buck in 1982. Scott Jutson designed the later Northshore 370 and the Northshore 369, which Sail-World reported as the 2003 Australian Sailboat of the Year.
Construction through the eras
The Australian yard's build practice shifted partway through its run: hulls moulded after 1984 used vinyl ester resin, either in the first layer or through a full lay-up, specifically to resist osmotic blistering, a change reflected in the five-year warranty against blistering the yard began offering on boats sold after 1995.
Lines and generations
The numbered lineup grew out of the trailer-sailor Cole 23: the 27, the first yacht built under the Northshore banner, followed, and Buck mortgaged his own house to fund its production, later crediting that boat as the reason the whole lineage exists. The 33 and the Kauffman-designed 38 came next - the first 38, named Siena, was built at Northshore's Mona Vale, Sydney factory in 1983, and the model went on to win Boat of the Year in 1986 before its moulds passed to dealer Sydney Yachting Centre, under new owners Geoff Pearson and Bob Vinks, in 1995. The 46 marked a shift away from the marque's earlier fractional rig to a traditional masthead rig, built as a bluewater passage maker with an estimated eight produced, and the 31 followed. The 340, launched in 1997, superseded the 33. Under Scott Jutson, a later generation added the 369 and 370. Two names that sometimes turn up alongside this lineup, the Vancouver 27 and the MGC27, in fact trace to the unrelated UK company described above, not to the Australian numbered range.
Who Northshore is for
For most buyers browsing this site, Northshore means the Sydney-built numbered range - Kauffman-era boats built as ocean-ready cruiser-racers, and later, Jutson-era boats built for the same dual brief with a newer hull, as the 369's Sailboat of the Year title suggests. Buyers drawn instead by the Southerly, Fisher, or Vancouver name should look to those brands' own pages: the UK company that built them shares a name and a trade with the Australian yard, but nothing else, including its considerably rockier history.