Flying sailboats for sale

Buying a used Flying: confirm which lineage before you look at anything else

A used sailboat listed simply as a "Flying" could be any of five entirely unrelated boats: a Flying Scot one-design daysailer, a Flying Fifteen keelboat, a Flying Dutchman Olympic-class dinghy, a German BWC cruiser or school boat, or a Taiwan-built Flying Dutchman Yachts cruiser that only borrows the Dutchman name. These aren't variations on a theme — they differ in hull type, purpose, era, and country of origin, and two of them (the Flying Dutchman dinghy and Flying Dutchman Yachts) share a name while having no builder or design history in common at all. Matching a listing to its actual lineage is the first job, because it determines everything that follows: what the boat is for, what to expect from its condition, and what to check.

Which era to target

Within the Flying Fifteen, the production mould is the clearest era marker: boats built on Roy Windibank's mark IV mould date to the early-to-mid 1980s, the mark IX and the "Ovington Smoothie" that followed mark the tightened tolerances introduced in 1993, and the current Ovington Mk 10 mould represents the newest production standard — later moulds generally mean tighter build tolerances. Within BWC's German range, 1982 is the dividing line: the Cruiser Jolle and Cruiser S were the flagships up to that point, while the Cruiser F family represents the newer cabin-cruiser design that followed, with its most recent update on the market since January 2009. The Flying Scot, by contrast, is a strict one-design — class rules dictate construction regardless of build year, so era matters less for that lineage than confirming which of the ownership eras (Gordon Douglass Boat Company, the Ammanns, or Flying Scot, Inc. under the Carpenters) produced a given hull.

What to inspect across the range

Two lineage-specific issues are worth checking directly. On the Flying Fifteen, Practical Boat Owner notes the class's deepish fixed keel makes launching and recovery difficult and rules out beach launching entirely — a real consideration for anyone without slip or trailer-hoist access. On the Taiwan-built Flying Dutchman Yachts cruiser, owners report recurring problems with leaks around deck fittings and windows, corrosion on stainless-steel hardware, and difficulty sourcing spare parts or service for what is now a rare boat — all worth budgeting for on any example under consideration.

Navigating the lineup

Buyers set on a one-design racing dinghy or keelboat should look toward the Fifteen or the Dutchman, where mould generation and Olympic-era pedigree do most of the work of dating a hull; buyers wanting a small cabin cruiser should look to BWC's German-built Cruiser range or, for a rarer find, a Flying Dutchman Yachts boat from Taiwan. Because these lineages don't overlap in purpose, shopping the "Flying" name effectively means picking a category first and a hull second — the full model directory on this page breaks out the individual listings from there.