Comet sailboats for sale

Buying a used Comet: identify the builder before anything else

A boat listed as a "Comet" could come from any of three unconnected builders. Most will trace to Comar Yachts, the Italian yard that started out in Forlì and later relocated to Fiumicino, building boats under the Comet name from the early 1960s onward. A smaller number will be the classic American one-design dinghy dating to 1932, and fewer still will be Britain's separate Comet Dinghies, maker of the Duo and Trio. None of these three shares a hull, a designer, or a construction era with the others, so the first job before evaluating condition is confirming exactly which "Comet" is on offer — a brand reputation earned by one tells a buyer nothing useful about the other two.

Which era to target

Within the Comar line, the clearest dividing line is ownership. Boats from the founding decades — the Van de Stadt-and-Finot Comet 910 of 1971, the Finot-designed 801 and 850 of the 1970s, and the Finot/Peterson/Vallicelli-influenced range that followed through the 1980s — came from the original Sipla-turned-Comar company under its founding leadership. Everything built after Massimo and Flavia Guardigli's takeover carries a different design lineage: Bruce Farr's Comet 38, 50, and 65; Sergio Lupoli's 33, 36, and later Smart line; and the Studio Vallicelli-designed Sport series that began with the 51 S. Outside the Comar line entirely, the American Comet dinghy runs on its own, much longer timeline: designed in 1932, renamed twice before the class settled on "Comet" by 1938, and eventually taken up by a fresh builder in Bristol, Rhode Island, decades on — so an original wooden-hulled example and a newer, composite-built one from that later builder represent different eras of the same one-design class, not different models.

Navigating the lineup

Comar's own range spans roughly 20 feet up to 50-plus-foot Sport-line cruiser-racers, later organized into the Sport, Raised Saloon, and Smart lines alongside a separate run of C-Cat catamarans — the full model directory on this page breaks out lengths and years across that spread. Buyers after a compact one-design daysailer or trainer, rather than a cruiser-racer, are more likely looking at the unrelated 16-foot American Comet class or the UK's Duo and Trio; treat those as a different search entirely, not a small end of the Italian range.