Contessa sailboats for sale

Buying a used Contessa: know which chapter of the story built your boat

A used Contessa is a bet on which chapter of the marque's history built the specific boat in front of you, not on a single continuous product line. Jeremy Rogers Ltd's own fortunes moved through a volume-production peak in the 1970s, a receivership and mould sale in the early 1980s, an interim builder working from acquired tooling, and a mid-1990s buyback that returned production to a small, made-to-order scale. Separately, a Canadian licensee built its own run of Contessa 26s and 32s to slightly different specifications. None of that makes one era or yard better than another, but it does mean two boats carrying the same model name can come from different builders, decades, and construction details — condition and paperwork matter more than the badge alone.

Which era to target

The original Lymington-built run — Contessa 26s and 32s from the 1960s and 1970s, plus the rarer Sparkman & Stephens- and Doug Peterson-designed models that followed — represents the marque's volume production, built before the early-1980s receivership. Canadian-licensed 26s and 32s, built under licence by J.J. Taylor and Sons into 1990, are a distinct build: Taylor's Contessa 26s were sold as the J.J. Taylor 26 after 1984, so Canadian boats can turn up listed under either name, and Taylor's 32s were finished to Lloyd's specifications. A small interim batch of 32s came out of Mike Slack's Lowestoft yard on moulds acquired during the receivership, before Jeremy Rogers bought the 32's tooling back in 1995 and restarted the model the following year as a bespoke, built-to-order boat — a different kind of purchase, in production terms, from anything built before it.

What to inspect across the range

Specifics depend on which model and which builder produced a given hull. On a Contessa 26, Yachting Monthly's inspection notes flag the mast support area for compression damage and the foot of the moulded keel for damage that could let water in — both worth checking regardless of a boat's age or origin. On a Contessa 32, knowing whether a hull came from the English or Canadian production run matters for the deck: SAILING Magazine's used-boat notebook identifies balsa coring on later Canadian-built decks against solid fibreglass on English-built ones, a material difference worth confirming before survey rather than assuming from the model name alone.

Navigating the lineup

Size and era both do useful work in sorting the range: the 26 and 32 anchor the high-volume end, the Peterson-designed 35, 28, 43 and OOD34 sit at the performance-racing end built in smaller numbers, and Humphreys' Contessa 33 and 27 close out the badge from the 1980s. The full model directory on this page breaks each of these out by length and build year for closer comparison.