Jensen sailboats for sale

Buying a used Jensen: identify which boat you're actually looking at

A boat listed as a "Jensen" could be either of two unrelated designs: an American Cal-badged cruiser-racer from a major California fiberglass builder, or a Danish Impala from a Svendborg naval architect's own line. The two share nothing but a surname — different country, different designer, different construction history — so the first task for any buyer is figuring out which one is actually for sale. The model name settles it immediately: a Cal 36 or Cal 28 is the American boat, an Impala 28 or Impala 36 is the Danish one, and the rest of a buyer's approach, from where to search listings to what to inspect, follows from that answer.

Which era to target

For the Cal-badged boats, the naming itself is the buying clue: Jensen Marine renamed its own designs under the Cal banner early in the company's history, and that renamed badge, not the founder's surname, is what these boats were sold and are listed under. A buyer hunting Jensen Marine's boats does better searching under Cal, since that is the badge on the boat and the page where its full model range and era-by-era detail live.

For the Impala, era is a construction question with a clear before-and-after. The earliest Impalas were hard-chine boats built of plywood — a hull form the material required, not a styling choice. Later, an Impala 33 and Impala 36 joined the line with round bilges rather than a hard chine — a change that carries straight into both models in this catalog, the Impala 28 and the Impala 36. Confirming which hull form a given Impala has is one of the most useful things a buyer can check, since it marks a real construction-era boundary rather than a cosmetic difference. It is also worth establishing whether an individual boat left the works factory-built or was assembled from a self-build kit, since Jensen sold quite a few of the Impala as kits during the 1980s, and a kit boat's quality rests on whoever put it together rather than on the builder's own shop standard.

Navigating the lineup

This catalog's model directory holds both families side by side, but they do not belong on the same shopping list. A Cal 36 or Cal 28 buyer is shopping the Cal range and should treat it as such, since that make's own page carries its full history and detail. An Impala 28 or Impala 36 buyer should establish two things before going further: that the hull is round-bilged, as both of this catalog's models are, and whether the boat is factory-built or kit-assembled. The full model directory on this page separates the two families; confirm which one a listing actually is before comparing it to anything else.