Pacific Seacraft sailboats: conservative construction built around one design partnership
Pacific Seacraft's identity is inseparable from two names: Henry Mohrschladt, the self-taught engineer who founded the company, and William "Bill" Crealock, the naval architect whose designs came to define most of the lineup. Between them, the boats share a consistent approach — solid or lightly cored fiberglass construction, double-ended or skeg-hung conservative underbodies, and a builder that kept refining the same hull molds for decades rather than chasing frequent model changes.
That continuity survived a real break in the company's history. Pacific Seacraft went through an industry downturn, a change of ownership, and a bankruptcy before restarting on the opposite coast under new ownership. Models across the lineup — from the Flicka 20 up through the 44 — were built across all of those eras, which is part of why construction details differ depending on when a given hull came off the line.
Origins and ownership
Pacific Seacraft got its start in 1975 in Southern California, when self-taught designer Henry Mohrschladt teamed up with builder Mike Howarth — a carpenter and tooling expert who also installed engines — to found the company. In their first year they worked out of a lean-to behind Howarth's father's garage in Anaheim. They debuted the Pacific Seacraft 25, inspired by double-ended New England fishing vessels, at the Newport Beach boat show in 1976. As demand grew, the company leased industrial space in Costa Mesa and Santa Ana before buying a former Dr. Pepper bottling plant in Fullerton. Mohrschladt went on to design the Mariah 31 in 1977 and the Orion 27 in 1979.
The company grew to roughly 150 employees building dozens of boats a year in California. Mohrschladt and Howarth eventually left to start what would become the sport-fishing boat brand Cabo, and Pacific Seacraft went through a series of ownership changes, including a sale to Singmarine Industries, Ltd. of Hong Kong after the boatbuilding industry's 1980s downturn. By 2006 the company was in bankruptcy. In September 2007, Stephen Brodie — whose background was in commercial construction and marine archaeology, including dives on wrecks from the 16th century, the Civil War, and World War II — bought more than 20 truckloads of molds and tooling at the bankruptcy auction and moved the company to Washington, North Carolina, restarting production in 2008.
The Crealock partnership and design lineage
Most of Pacific Seacraft's lineup traces back to naval architect William "Bill" Ion Belton Crealock. In the mid-1970s Crealock entered a sailboat magazine design contest with what became the Crealock 37; the California builder that first tooled up for it, Clipper Marine, went out of business before completing a single hull. Cruising Consultants of Newport Beach then acquired the molds and built 16 Crealock 37s between 1977 and 1979 before it, too, folded. Pacific Seacraft purchased the rights and molds in 1980 and continued building the boat with Crealock; about fifteen years later, in the mid-1990s, the company renamed it from Crealock 37 to Pacific Seacraft 37 to match the rest of its model names. In 2002, the Crealock 37 that Bill Crealock had built for himself was inducted into the American Sailboat Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island. According to owner Steve Brodie, Crealock designed everything from the 24 up through the 44, with particular success on the 37. Across his full career — with other clients including Excalibur, Islander, Columbia, Westsail, and Cabo Rico — an estimated 8,000 boats were built to Crealock's designs.
Construction through the eras
The earliest Crealock 37 hulls were an uncored, solid fiberglass laminate, with decks cored in plywood rather than balsa, hand-laid and stiffened by a longitudinal-and-transverse framing system of mahogany-veneered plywood bulkheads tabbed to the hull and deck. Beginning in the late 1980s, Pacific Seacraft adopted vinylester resin — less hydroscopic than polyester and more resistant to blistering — applying it over an ISO-NPG gelcoat beneath a layer of chopped-strand mat. Decks continued to be sandwich-cored with marine-grade plywood through the mid-1990s, at which point the builder switched to end-grain balsa core with plywood inserts retained under hardware. Hull-to-deck joints were finished with a teak cap rail, most often fastened with stainless screws on four-inch centers plus 3M 5200 adhesive, and Pacific Seacraft introduced molded fiberglass structural interior modules that kept the teak joinery while opening up the interior.
After the North Carolina restart, Brodie's yard moved to building hulls in 100 percent vinylester resin, rather than the single protective layer used earlier. It also switched from 304 to 316 stainless for exterior and structural metal, including a change from punched-out to CNC waterjet-cut chainplates, and moved to hard-panel headliners in place of the earlier soft-vinyl style.
Who Pacific Seacraft is for
The line runs from the pocket-cruising Flicka 20 — roughly 400 built, mostly by Pacific Seacraft — up through the 44-foot flagship, but the character stays consistent: Practical Sailor summed it up as "modern traditional," with pronounced sheerlines, bronze hardware, moderate displacement, and conservative underbodies built for the kind of offshore use the 37 was specifically designed for. That makes the lineup a fit for buyers prioritizing hull integrity and passage-making pedigree over interior volume.
Model-specific quirks are worth knowing before a survey. Practical Sailor's review of the 31 noted that its optional bimini blocks the helm's view of the mainsail, that standing water can collect in the forward cockpit footwell under power at full throttle, that the transmission dipstick is awkward to reach, and that the outboard-mounted primary winches can catch the winch handle on the lower lifeline. On the 34, the same publication pointed out that chainplates are mounted outside the hull, which makes them easy to inspect. On the Flicka, an early design lacked a bridgedeck or high sill — which the reviewer called "decidedly un-seamanlike" — before the builder added one as part of a 1983 running change.
