Com-Pac sailboats for sale

Buying a used Com-Pac: a badge the builder no longer stands behind

A used Com-Pac comes from a company that no longer exists: Hutchins — the family firm behind every boat in the lineup — wound down in May 2025, weeks after Gerry Hutchins, who ran the company alongside his brother Richard, died that February. That changes what buying the badge means. A Com-Pac was always a small, simply built boat meant to be towed, hand-rigged, and sailed without much fuss — with the builder gone, the individual boat, its documented upkeep, and any surviving owner community carry more of the weight that a still-operating yard used to carry. Condition and history matter more here than the reputation of the name on the transom.

Which era to target

The earliest boats — the 16, 19, and 23 — are Clark Mills and Bob Johnson's pocket-cruiser designs from the 1970s and '80s. Reviewers who've sailed the fixed-keel, shoal-draft versions of these boats flag the same tradeoff more than once: on the 23, a draft of just 2 feet 3 inches with no centerboard limits how close to the wind the boat can sail, and on the 19, a similarly shallow keel keeps the boat tracking straight in gusty weather at the cost of a quick turn, along with less sitting headroom than its rivals. Buyers shopping this size range are trading pointing ability and standing room for a boat that tows easily and floats in skinny water.

Bigger boats followed with the 25, 27, and 35 — the size band to target if the plan is a boat that lives in a slip rather than on a trailer. And starting in 1999, the catboats — led by the Sun Cat and Picnic Cat, both Clark Mills designs — took the brand back toward its shoal-draft, gunkholing roots in a single-sail, gaff-rigged package built for daysailing and simple weekending rather than distance cruising.

What to inspect across the range

On the catboats, Sailing magazine's owner-facing reporting on the Sun Cat is a useful guide to what a single-sail gaff rig puts a hull through: the strain of carrying one sail can flex the boat enough to crack or craze the gelcoat, so it's worth checking the deck and hull closely for exactly that. The same reporting recommends inspecting — and, on older boats, potentially replacing — the standing rigging, paying close attention to the mast hinge, and treating deck delamination as always a possibility on survey.

Navigating the lineup

Three broad bands span the used Com-Pac market: the small, trailerable pocket cruisers built through the 1970s and '80s; the larger coastal cruisers that followed from 1985 on; and the shoal-draft catboats introduced in 1999. Buyers prioritizing trailerability and simplicity should stay in the pocket-cruiser and catboat bands; buyers wanting a boat that lives in the water full time should look toward the coastal cruisers. The full model directory on this page breaks each band down by specific size and year.