At some point or another during his 36 years at Nautical Structures, Rick Thomas supplied cranes, gangways and davits to 27 US shipyards that built yachts large enough to be professionally crewed. Of those 27, only five are actively delivering new builds today, three exclusively do refits and two have moved their production offshore. Seventeen have permanently shuttered their operations.
“We've got a legacy of shipbuilding and shipwrights and an economy that's second to none in the world, and we can't compete. We've lost 80 percent or more of our market over the last two-and-a-half to three decades,” Thomas says.
The situation is particularly befuddling when you consider the world's biggest market for large yachts is within these same shores. Estimates of Americans’ share of large yachts range from 25 to 40 percent of the world fleet. What is irrefutable is that they own more supeiyachts than any other nationality.
The momentum of US boatbuilding seemed unstoppable in the early 2000s, a golden decade that saw a peak of 113 projects over 79ft under contract or in build at the end of 2008, according to BOAT 's Global Order Book (GOB), which tracks supeiyacht builders’ activity. This put the US second among yacht-building
