Memory sailboats for sale

Buying a used Memory: the builder matters as much as the boat

A used Memory 19 isn't a used example of one company's product - it's a used example of Tony Robinson's design, built by whichever of four successive, unrelated builders happened to be making it at the time. Eric Bergqvist, Liverpool Boat Company, Salterns Boatbuilders, and, per Classic Boat, Collars each took up the same drawings and built to their own standard. There's no single factory reputation to fall back on the way there would be with a brand built continuously under one roof; the risk in a used Memory 19 is tied to which builder, and which point in that sequence, produced the actual hull in front of you, more than to the design itself, which both Classic Boat and Practical Boat Owner treat as a proven, well-regarded small boat.

Which era to target

The earliest boats, built by Bergqvist and then Liverpool Boat Company, were sold as bare hulls with only a deck and centreboard case - the buyer supplied the rest, and Classic Boat notes the results varied. Liverpool later offered a small cabin option, and some owners fitted their own cabins onto bare hulls, so two boats from the same period can differ significantly in finish and layout. That changed once Greg Dalrymple began building complete boats at Salterns in 1996: quality became consistent from that point, and Salterns-built boats were numbered, which makes them straightforward to identify. A hull's mast step is worth checking regardless of era, since the fleet splits roughly evenly between keel-stepped and tabernacled rigs. Ballast is another era marker: earlier boats carry sand ballast, while later ones use lead pigs under the sole, and the latest examples add internal buoyancy to meet Recreational Craft Directive requirements - a useful proxy for how recent a given hull is when its exact build year isn't documented. How many were built depends on whose count is used - Classic Boat says about 140, Practical Boat Owner says more than 130 - but either figure makes a self-completed early hull a meaningfully smaller slice of the total production run than a numbered Salterns-built boat.