Island Trader sailboats for sale

Buying a used Island Trader: confirming which name you're actually buying

A used Island Trader listing carries more naming ambiguity than most Taiwan-import brands of its era. The 37 and 38 are the same boat sold under different brochure names in different years, and the line's larger cruising ketch turns up under as many as five separate identities — Island Trader, Yankee Clipper, Formosa, CT, and Sea Wolf 41 — built across several different Taiwan yards, with no guarantee any two hulls share a builder. Buying used here means treating the model name on a listing as a starting point for research, not a guarantee of which yard actually built the boat.

Which era to target

The line reached the U.S. in the late 1970s wave of Taiwan-built Far East yachts, brought in by Marine International, a Bay Head, New Jersey, importer active from the late 1970s into the late 1980s. Close to 200 of the 37/38 alone were built over about a decade, judging from surveyed hull numbers — a long enough run that a given hull's individual history and upkeep matter more than its model year alone.

What to inspect across the range

Owners surveyed by Practical Sailor flagged a recurring list of trouble spots on the 37/38: gate valves in place of proper sea cocks, poor-quality turnbuckles and cable-steering sheaves, a poorly designed exhaust run capable of engine damage, inadequate rudder-stock support, and wiring shortcuts such as an engine starter wired directly to a single battery. Some boats built in the 1970s also carried plywood cabins prone to rot, a problem owners said gave the whole line a bad name. These issues surface across the surveyed fleet of the line's original, most widely built model — worth checking for on any hull under that name, whichever brochure year it happens to carry.

Navigating the lineup

Beyond the 37/38, a buyer chasing the line's larger cruising ketch should expect the 41 to turn up under one of several other badges — a hull worth researching by build history as much as by name. The Magellan 36, a smaller variant some Island Traders were sold under, points toward a "modified" take on Hugh Angelman's Sea Witch design, per a surviving brochure. The full model directory on this page breaks the lineup out by size for closer comparison.