Islander sailboats for sale

Buying a used Islander: treat every hull as its own case, not a single product line

A used Islander is really several different products carrying one badge. The company changed hands five times before closing in 1986, leased its design work out to a rotating set of outside naval architects rather than keeping one house designer, and even reused the same hull under a second nameplate or the same model number for two unrelated boats. None of that makes a given Islander a bad buy - but it does mean the badge alone tells a buyer less than it would for a brand with one continuous design office, and condition plus a confirmed model identity matter more than the name on the transom.

Which era to target

The earliest McGlasson- and Wayfarer-era boats - the Islander 24, the Bahama 24, the original narrow-beam, long-keel Islander 32 - are simple hand-laid fiberglass hulls with internal lead ballast, built before Islander used any interior liner at all; they're also the boats with the thinnest paper trail, since even the builder had lost track of the Islander 24's own specifications by 1971. Around 1970, two parallel shifts are worth knowing: Robert Finch's Islander 30 Mark II introduced Islander's first molded fiberglass interior liner, while the Islander 36, arriving the following year, was purpose-built as a racer-cruiser under the era's new offshore racing rule. From 1975, Robert Perry's Islander 28 moved construction again, to an interior built as a unit outside the hull rather than dropped in as a liner; a review of his following design, the Islander 32 Mark II, likewise notes only limited use of liners. The final pre-closure boats, like the early-1980s Islander 34 Mark II, went a different direction still, with Divinycell foam coring in the hull itself rather than a solid laminate. None of these is strictly "better" - they're different build philosophies from different Islander eras, and worth matching to what a buyer actually wants from the boat.

What to inspect across the range

Two issues turn up across models and decades rather than sitting isolated to one boat. Gelcoat blistering is the most consistent: reviewers describe the Islander 32 Mark II as particularly hard-hit, note that early Bahama 30 production was prone to it below the waterline, and flag a few mid-1970s Islander 36 hulls with the same problem - worth a moisture check on any older hull regardless of model. Most 1970s-built Islanders are also reported to have mast-step corrosion, with spars from that decade often needing to come out for a proper inspection and trim.

Navigating the lineup

The range breaks down into three practical groups: the numbered mainline running from the 24 up through the 41 and the 55, the Bahama boats that share mainline hulls under their own deck and nameplate, and the Freeport cruisers descended from the Islander 40 Motor Sailor. Starting with which of the three fits the intended use narrows things faster than working through model numbers alone - the full model directory on this page breaks the lineup down further from there.