Ferretti sailboats for sale

Buying a used Ferretti: a narrow window before the motor-yacht era

Ferretti is known now as a motor-yacht builder, but the sailboats it built between the early 1970s and early 1980s predate that identity entirely — the company's own history dates its pivot to motor-only production to 1982. A used Ferretti sailboat isn't a used example of a brand still building to the same identity; it's an artifact from a yard that spent barely a decade under sail before turning fully to power. That narrow window means condition and documentation matter more than brand reputation: age itself is a bigger variable here than it would be with a marque that kept building sailboats for decades, and any surviving hull predates the company's entire motor-yacht era.

Which era to target

The earliest boat is effectively a one-off: in 1971, before any production line existed, the yard built a 10-meter motorsailer out of wood on a repurposed fishing-boat hull and named it Khamsin — a survivor from that build would be a restoration project more than a sailing yacht as-is. The 1970s brought the Altura 33 and Altura 42, sailboats Norberto Ferretti himself has called milestones of his career. The best-documented buy is the later Altura 41, introduced in 1983 with naval architect Dick Carter's name on the design: on this model, confirm whether the layup meets the RINa and Lloyd's standards documented for the boat, and check which ballast configuration a given hull carries — Ferretti built the bulb as either a fixed casting or a fully retractable one, both cast iron under a Veneziani paint treatment — since a retractable bulb changes what a surveyor needs to check.

Navigating the lineup

Within that short run, the Altura 41 carries the clearest documented pedigree — a named designer, a boat-show debut, and specific construction standards a survey can be measured against. The earlier Khamsin and the 1970s Altura 33 and 42 carry less documentation and more variability hull to hull; the full model directory on this page is the place to see what's actually come up for sale.