Finnsailer sailboats for sale

Buying a used Finnsailer: the builder's ownership history matters as much as the model number

Every Finnsailer traces to a single Finnish shipyard, Turun Veneveistämö Oy -- also called Turku Boatyard -- but that yard itself changed hands more than once while the boats were being built. A creditor, Oy Telko Ab, seized the company and sold it outright to the industrial group Oy Fiskars Ab in 1964; even after the original company was formally dissolved as its own legal entity in 1973, boatbuilding carried on under Fiskars as a standing production unit until the line was dropped in 1981. None of that changes what's underneath a given hull, but it explains why paperwork on one Finnsailer may point to Turun Veneveistämö and another to Oy Fiskars Ab -- both name the same builder at different points in its life.

Which era to target

Two outside designers, working in different periods, split the lineup. The Finnsailer 29 dates to the early seventies and is credited to British naval architect Angus S. Primrose; it left the Turku yard, though catalogs note other yards built it as well. The Finnsailer 34 came later, launched in 1978 to a design by Finnish architect Hans Groop, with a fiberglass hull and deck laid up by hand and mahogany joinery inside. Shoppers weighing the 29 against the 34 are really choosing between two separate design pedigrees, not just two sizes. The Finnsailer 30 and the Finnsailer 38 sit apart from both: the 30 was built directly under the Oy Fiskars Ab name once the original yard dissolved, and the 38, dated to 1976 in catalog records, carries no named designer at all -- both are in-house Fiskars work rather than a freelance architect's design.

Navigating the lineup

Size the range by design pedigree as much as by length: the Primrose-designed 29 at the smaller end, the Groop-designed 34 above it, and the in-house-built 30 and 38 rounding out the top of the line without an outside architect's name attached. The full model directory on this page breaks the lineup down by year and length for closer comparison.