Elliott sailboats for sale

Buying a used Elliott: the name on the transom is the designer, not the builder

An Elliott sailboat is really two decisions folded into one: Greg Elliott's design, and whichever yard the original client picked to build it. Elliott Marine's own process hands over detailed construction drawings once a builder is chosen and can provide project management liaising with that builder and other suppliers, but the yard itself never becomes part of the Elliott name. That shifts the usual builder-reputation check onto the buyer in a way a marque that builds its own hulls doesn't require: the design lineage is consistent across the range, but hull quality rides on a builder this page can't name for you, so it pays to trace who actually built the specific boat in front of you.

Which era to target

The clearest dividing line in the range runs through the 5.9. The earliest boats were hand-built in wood by Greg Elliott himself in the early 1980s; once the class shifted to fibreglass production the fleet grew fast, and the fibreglass hulls sold since have all come off a mould taken from one of those original wood boats. From there the sportsboat and youth-trainer line grew through the Elliott 6, the design later chosen as the Olympic-class keelboat for women's match racing at the 2012 London Olympics, and the Elliott 7, built in several editions for the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron's youth training fleet. At the cruising end, the Tourer series starts at the 12.5-metre 1250 and climbs through the 1750 and larger sizes, and most of those are one-off builds rather than a repeated production run — the 1350 in that range is distinguished by water ballast, carried in two 900-litre tanks built into either side of the hull. Buyers should treat any Tourer above the smallest sizes as effectively a custom boat rather than a sistership of others in the line.

What to inspect across the range

The 5.9 is the one model with a documented modification history worth checking against: Live Sail Die's profile of the boat notes that it has picked up only two changes since the 1980s — a revised mainsheet traveller position and a sealed-off outboard well — so confirming whether a given hull has those updates, and whether it's an original wood boat or a later fibreglass build, is worth doing before making an offer. Elsewhere in the range, condition comes down to the individual builder and boat rather than a known design flaw.

Navigating the lineup

Two different boats sit under the Elliott name. One is the tight one-design sportsboat and trainer line — 5.9, 6, 7 — bred for club racing and the Squadron's youth program, where boats within a size should be close to interchangeable by design. The other is the Tourer cruising series, mostly one-off builds meant for short-handed sailing, where each hull is closer to a custom boat than a production sistership. Larger bespoke and race-oriented commissions sit outside both patterns and are best judged on their own build history. The full model directory on this page breaks the range out by size and year.