C&C Yachts was a builder of high-performance fiberglass monohull sailboats with production facilities in Canada, Germany, and the United States. C&C designed and constructed a full range of production line cruiser-racer boats, as well as custom one-off and short production run racing and cruising boats. C&C boats ranged in size from as small as 21 ft (6.4 m) to as large as 67 ft (20.4 m). C&C also produced a line of bluewater cruising boats in the 35 ft (10.7 m) to 48 ft (14.6 m) range under its Landfall brand. In addition, C&C designed sailboats for production by a number of other manufacturers such as CS Yachts, Mirage Yachts, Northern Yachts, Ontario Yachts, Paceship Yachts, and Tanzer Industries.

C&C was founded in 1969 as a public company in Canada, which resulted from a joint venture among several companies and design teams. At the peak of its market success, the company supplied 50% of the Canadian market and 20% of the US market.

The company name, C&C Yachts, came from the names of two of the founding designers, George Cuthbertson and George Cassian.

Two Canadian sailors; George Cuthbertson, a mechanical engineer, and George Cassian, an aircraft designer, then unemployed following the demise of the Avro Arrow jet project, formed the Cuthbertson and Cassian design group in 1961. This partnership evolved out of Cuthbertson's previous yacht brokerage and design firm. Inishfree, the 54 ft (16.5 m) racing yacht built 1958, was Cuthbertson's first design of consequence. Cuthbertson initially held 75% interest in the company and later increased Cassian's share to a third. They started by designing a small number of steel and wooden boats, with Cuthbertson doing the preliminary lines and calculations and Cassian the interior plans and details.

After successful design of the Hinterhoeller Invader 36, in 1965 Canadian Perry Connolly (who had previously purchased an Invader 36) commissioned Cuthbertson and Cassian to design a custom 40-foot (12m) racing sloop. At a discussion between periods at a Toronto Maple Leafs game in Maple Leaf Gardens Connolly requested "the meanest, hungriest 40-footer afloat". The boat, named Red Jacket, was built by Bruckmann Manufacturing of balsa wood sandwiched between two layers of fibreglass. The resulting structure was strong, stiff and significantly lighter than the wood or solid fiberglass yachts then sailing. Red Jacket is considered to be the first sailboat engineered with a cored hull (the practice is common in yacht-building and aerospace, even in the manufacture of wind-turbine blades today). She was launched in May 1966 and won 11 of 13 starts that summer. That winter, Red Jacket headed south and won a number of races on the famed Southern Ocean Racing Conference (SORC), competing against more than 85 of the best racers of the day. Connolly went back the next year, and Red Jacket was, in 1968, the first Canadian boat to win the SORC. The sailing community at large paid attention and demand for the C&C designs in production skyrocketed.

C&C joined forces with their builders and suppliers: Belleville Marine yacht builder Ian Morch, George Hinterhoeller of Hinterhoeller Yachts and custom builder Erich Bruckmann. Together they formed a holding company, C&C Yachts Limited, officially formed on September 26, 1969., which was traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange with the help of an IPO by Walwyn, Stodgell & Co., an issue of 350,000 common shares at $4.50, providing the fledgling company with working capital of $1.5 million. The company started the mass production of fiberglass sailboats, a relatively new industry at that time. The sale of stock enabled C&C to build inventory in the off-season, which would then be delivered to dealers in the spring and early summer. It allowed efficiencies which were otherwise impossible.

Owing to his degrees in engineering from the University of Toronto, and business administration from the University of Southern California, Ian Morch was made president. George Cuthbertson directed the design effort, Erich Bruckmann the custom work, and George Hinterhoeller managed production. The plant at Niagara-on-the-Lake was "a completely integrated operation" aside from lead keel casting. The plant contained a rigging shop, a metal shop, a wood shop, a fiberglass shop, a upholstery shop, and an assembly area. In the operation conceived by Hinterhoeller, the yachts were built in pits, as opposed to the traditional use of ladders to mount the erected hull and keel.

In 1969 the customs tariff to import yachts from the US into Canada was 17.5% and C&C achieved sales of $3.9 million its first year.