The brokerage team at David Walters Yachts has listed the Camper & Nicholsons 58 Roxy for sale with an asking price of $319,000. 

The 1984 model Nicholson 58 is located in Annapolis, Maryland, and has been well-maintained and upgraded by her owners. The model sports beautiful lines reminiscent of ’80s yacht design, and the interior is chock full of high-quality joinery that was built to last.

The boat has three large cabins to sleep six or seven; a large galley; salon space for a roomy, relaxing liveaboard lifestyle; and a well-appointed cockpit.

Roxy is 58 feet long with 15.5 feet of beam, a 13-foot draft and a displacement of 53,025 pounds. The boat is powered by its original Westerbeke 115 hp diesel engine with 4,200 engine hours.

From the broker’s host site: “All of this belies a very quick-sea going vessel that will get you where you want to go. She’s clocked countless 250-mile days in her time, but with her 55,000-plus pound displacement, she does it with grace and ease, and with comfort for the crew. In an era where the phrase ‘bluewater cruiser’ is thrown around willy-nilly, Roxy [is] an example of the real deal.”

Hand-built to high marine engineering standards at the Camper & Nicholsons yard, Roxy’s hull is solid fiberglass and kevlar. According to the listing broker, British sailor Sir Robin Knox-Johnson chose this hull with a few modifications for his fleet of eight adventure yachts to race around the world.

The owner’s suite has a queen-sized berth with an ensuite head and separate shower. The salon offers two comfortable seating areas, a large dining table and a 2022 flatscreen TV with stereo and DVD/Blu Ray player.

The galley is equipped with a freezer/refrigerator, a four-burner stove, a microwave and a toaster, plus the gas grill astern. The deck was refinished with Awlgrip in 2022.

The yacht’s main mast measures 79 feet and 10 inches with an in-mast powered furler that was rebuilt in 2023. Questionable stays were replaced during a full rig inspection in 2019. Roxy’s sail plan includes 2021 North 3DI mainsails and new 2023 North Dacron mizzen sails.

More details about the Camper & Nicholsons 58 Roxy, as well as detailed equipment specs and a virtual video tour can be found here.

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Nicholson 35 drawings

It seems I’ve gone full circle here, but family is family. In my years at C&N, I saw a few Nicholson 35s being built, and I even got to sail on one or two. I also admire the work of Ray Wall, who designed this boat and several other classic Nicholsons, including the Nicholson 55, which was one of the best designs of its era, if not all time. You can see the lineage in the 35’s hull and feel it in its comfortable motion.

It packs all the components of basic yacht layout—forecabin, saloon, head, galley, chart table (yes—very important), and quarter berth—into 35 feet with enough room left over for a decent-sized cockpit that has wonderfully deep coamings that’ll help shield the crew from cold breezes.

The accommodations plan features a U-shaped galley, quarter berth (on later models), straight settee on the opposite side (two proper sea berths), and cozy dining area. The head occupies the whole width of the boat between the saloon and forward cabin, which gives it lots of elbow room and isn’t a logistical obstacle with just a couple on board.

Early boats had a fairly miserly sail plan to suit the sailing conditions in the English Channel and neighboring waters. An “American” version had a slightly taller rig for the lighter winds of the U.S. East Coast, and this rig was later adopted for all boats.

In some areas, the early boats, although sound, appear a little cheap, but C&N gradually steered back toward the “quality” end of the market, where it could leverage its 200-year history of building for the aristocracy. I could be very comfortable aboard a later Nic 35.

Nicholson 35
Price Range $46,000 (1976) to $77000 (1973)
More Info:

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Nicholson 476 drawings

C&N offered the boat in several configurations: aft cockpit, center cockpit, sloop, ketch, and three choices of keel. We only built a few of the possible permutations, but accommodating them all in the design was quite an exercise. The deck mold had three parts. The forward part served both models and included the forward couple of feet of the center cockpit. To that would be attached the mold for either the center cockpit or aft cockpit. This meant that the aft-cockpit boat had a small “mother-in-law” cockpit out of the way of the action in the aft cockpit and had its own companionway. The only major difference in the interiors of the two boats was the aft cabin.

A center-cockpit layout usually works out well for the engine. It ends up under the cockpit, where it has room to breathe and it’s easy to get at. The engine stayed put on the aft-cockpit version, which placed it conveniently forward of the aft cabin.

C&N built a dozen 476s and then, in about 1990, sold the tooling to Colvic Craft, which built several hulls as the Bluewater 476. These boats probably bear little resemblance in finish to those built by C&N.

I’d prefer the aft-cockpit version. The master stateroom, where the off watch sleeps, is a whisper away from the on watch under the dodger. Entering the cockpit from below in a seaway is less traumatic, and it’s still a straight shot carrying hot chocolate from the galley. This arrangement has lots of sea berths including the saloon settees and a pilot berth. When in port, the mini-cockpit companionway assures privacy aft.

Looking at the drawings today, I think the saloon is a little wide open, but that’s what the market was looking for (and still is). By today’s measure, the boat could’ve used a little more waterline length, although it does have considerable load-carrying capacity. Several were fitted with in-mast furling mainsails, which I’m not fond of. The double-headsail sail plan wasn’t proportioned as a true cutter rig, so some might use that abominable term “cutter-rigged sloop” to describe it. I found this rig manageable and flexible. The halyards and reefing gear were on the mast, where they should be. I don’t see any reason to have all those tails cluttering the cockpit or, worse, especially on damp days, dribbling into the accommodations. With a mast pulpit, proper grabrails, and a harness and tether, working at the mast isn’t unsafe, and often it’s more efficient than playing musical winches in the cockpit.

Some folks may take issue with the ballast, which is a single lead casting set inside the molded keel. This might be vulnerable to water ingress if your navigation goes awry in a rocky region, but lead won’t corrode, expand, and blow the keel apart. And you don’t have to deal with keel bolts. Since we’ve all heard horror stories about scary stainless-steel keel-bolt corrosion, maybe internal ballast isn’t such a bad thing on a cruising boat.

The Nicholson 476 has a skeg-hung rudder, which is something I subscribe to as long as the skeg is substantial. If the rudder falls off, you have something left back there to help keep the boat on track. A spade rudder is wonderfully efficient, but lose it and you lose all directional control.

Is the Nicholson 476 my perfect boat? No, but it’d certainly do in a pinch. With the Nic 476 as a yardstick, how do the other boats on my wish list stack up?

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