Dyer sailboats for sale

Buying a used Dyer: small, simple dinghies where hull condition outweighs model year

A Dyer purchase is a small-boat purchase. The Dink, Dhow, Midget, and Daysailer are sailing, rowing, and light-power dinghies built by The Anchorage, Inc. of Warren, Rhode Island — not cruising boats — and because the basic design of each has stayed consistent across a long production history, the real variable in a used Dyer isn't the model year so much as the condition of the individual hull. That makes a careful inspection worth more than chasing a particular vintage.

Which era to target

Construction has shifted over time within each model rather than following one unbroken specification. The earliest Dyer Dinks, from the 1930s, were built in wood lapstrake before the yard moved to fiberglass hulls it called "Dyeresin." The Dhow's construction shifted too: built in plywood during an early-1940s wartime lifeboat contract, it was rebuilt in fiberglass in 1949 on that same wartime hull shape. A buyer should confirm which material era a given boat comes from before comparing it to another for sale — a wood-lapstrake Dink or a plywood-era Dhow is a different restoration proposition than a fiberglass hull from either line.

What to inspect across the range

On the Dink, Good Old Boat has pointed to the centerboard trunk as a weak spot: its fiberglass runs thin, and delamination there has been traced to a wooden plate glassed in to carry the centerboard lever — worth a close look, along with the thwarts, since one restored boat's aft thwart had curled where it wasn't screwed down. The Dink can also swamp or turn over, per the same review, a reason to check flotation and fittings as closely as the hull. On the Dhow, Cruising World put the hull's weight at about 106 pounds — light for a boat, but enough to make lifting it onto the deck something to plan for if it's being used as a tender rather than left in the water.

Navigating the lineup

Length sorts the range more usefully than anything else: at 7 feet 11 inches, the Midget is the smallest and lightest to handle; the 9-foot Dhow and 10-foot Dink sit in the middle, with the Dhow alone rated for up to four people or about 650 pounds; and the 12.5-foot Daysailer is the largest of the four. Matching that range of sizes to how a boat will be stored, launched, and used is the more useful lineup question than picking a favorite among them; the full model directory on this page breaks it down further.