Santa Cruz Yachts was founded in 1971 and owes it rich history and reputation for building excpetionally fast race yachts to Bill Lee, the legendary builder and designer.

Throughout the 70s and 80s, a sucession of  innovative and race-winning performance boats were built by Santa Cruz Yachts including in 1977, the famous 68 foot sled Merlin. This boat is often credited as the yacht which started the trend for Ultra Light Displacement Boats (ULDB).

In the year of her launch Merlin went on not only to win the Transpac Race (Los Angeles to Honolulu) but also to set a record time for the course which was only broken twenty years later, by another Santa Cruz Yacht, the SC70 of Roy Disney, Pyewacket.

In 2008, Santa Cruz Yachts comissioned Tim Kernan to design a new, extremely fast and light production boat and the Santa Cruz 37 is the result. A Santa Cruz 43 is also on the drawing board with production planned to start in the Autumn of 2010.