Bianca sailboats for sale

Buying a used Bianca: verify which yard actually built your hull, not just which model

Buying a used Bianca means buying from a name that covers two very different kinds of sailboat, built at various points by four different yards. The Bianca name itself belongs to a small Danish family boatbuilder in Rudkøbing that built long-keeled cruisers under its own roof; separately, that same yard also produced the Aphrodite 101, a Swedish-born one-design daysailer that, after Bianca stopped building it, passed to two further builders. Because the yard behind any given hull changed more than once, and because some models left the yard as unfinished kits, a buyer's first job is confirming who actually built and finished the specific boat in front of them, not just which model it is.

Which era to target

Bianca's own long-keeled line — the 27, Commander 31, Bianca 26/28, and Bianca 36 — came out of the Rudkøbing yard while Holger Leth Christensen owned it, before the yard changed hands in 1975 and closed outright in 1994. Any boat from this home-built line predates that closure by definition, so its age alone sets a rough ceiling on what to expect from a survey.

The Aphrodite 101's production run is worth tracing by builder before buying, since standards were not identical across its history. Early hulls, built at Bianca's own yard through the 1977 launch and into its financial troubles around 1987, came from a company with little prior experience building anything but wooden boats. Farsø-built boats from Bachs Yachts followed from 1988, and since 1994 the model has been produced in Germany under Ott Yacht, with Aars Yachts building to the tighter class specifications Ott Wassersport now manages the line to. Establishing which of these three eras a given hull belongs to matters as much as the model name itself.

What to inspect across the range

Where models were built with balsa-cored sandwich hulls or decks — the Commander 31 and the Bianca 320 among them — reviews at yachtdatabase.com flag that any work requiring penetration of the sandwich, such as fitting new hardware, needs special care to keep water out of the core. A few models add a further wrinkle: the Lido 30 and the Bianca 111 were both also sold as home-completion kits, so finish quality on those particular hulls depends on whoever completed the interior, not on the yard's own standard.

Navigating the lineup

Buyers weighing a slower, more traditional Danish cruiser should look toward Bianca's own long-keeled line; those after a livelier one-design daysailer should look to the Aphrodite 101, keeping its builder era in mind. The full model directory on this page spans both.