Jim Eastland, whose Eastland Yachts brokerage firm in Essex, Connecticut, introduced thousands of people to the joys of boating, died April 19, 2021. He was 86. “It’s like there’s a hole now in the fabric of friendship and sailing here,” says Eastland’s longtime friend Mark Ellis. “It’s a loss to a broad piece of the community.”
Eastland grew up in Westbrook, Connecticut, and was considered an athlete so gifted that when the U.S. Army sent him to Germany, it had him train others in competitive swimming and basketball. After returning from service, Eastland attended school for industrial design, and then got the boating bug while living in Westport, Connecticut. He started a dealership called Associated Yachts in Rowayton, Connecticut, in the 1960s, and then founded Eastland Yachts with his friend Patricia Foster. They had an office at the Dauntless Shipyard. “She did the business and accounting end, and he did the sales end,” Ellis recalls.
Ellis says that in any given year back then, Eastland Yachts would commission as many as 40 to 50 boats. It was a time when production boatbuilding was starting to burgeon. Brands that Eastland represented included Grampian, Sabre, C&C, Hallberg-Rassy and Hinterhoeller, which made Niagara and Nonsuch sailboats as well as Limestone powerboats.
“A lot of the boats he sold new, he ended up selling two or three times as used boats,” says Ellis, who designed boats for Hinterhoeller. “For Nonsuch, he was the knowledgeable broker to go to in the Northeast. Of the thousand or so Nonsuches that we built, he probably sold 30 percent of them.
“One of the things we collaborated on was the Northeast motorsailer,” Ellis adds. “The Nonsuch, in addition to being a good sailboat, could be a good motorsailer. He saw the concept of adding more of the amenities of a powerboat, more interior space. It had been done by others, but not very well. The Northeast 400 is the boat we did. We built three dozen of them.”
“When I came into [the industry] in the early 1970s, there was this great circle of people in the business,” Ellis says. “He was a leader in that. The people who worked for Jim Eastland thought highly of him.” Eastland earned that reputation. He was a competitive sailor who won events including Antigua Race Week, and he organized races for the American Schooner Association.
“There are brokers who push at you a lot. There are others that you go to because they’re easy to get along with and you value their advice,” Ellis says. “Jim was the latter.” —Kim Kavin
