Outremer sailboats for sale

Buying a used Outremer: know which generation you're actually buying

Outremer's core identity — a daggerboard performance catamaran built for offshore passages — has stayed consistent since Gérard Danson founded the yard in 1984, but the boats behind that identity have changed more than the model numbers suggest. The 45 is the sharpest example: two structurally unrelated boats have carried that number, one from the founding era and one from well after Grand Large Yachting took over. A used "Outremer 45" listing can point to either boat. Because these are performance platforms first, condition and equipment discipline matter more than raw size or model year — a well-kept early boat sailed and maintained on-brief will out-perform a bigger, newer hull that's been left heavy.

Which era to target

The clearest dividing line predates Grand Large Yachting's 2007 purchase of the shipyard: boats designed and built under founder Gérard Danson, through his death in 2005, versus everything built since under the Barreau-Neuman and then VPLP design partnerships. Multihulls World called the Outremer 43 — built until 2000 — "the last representative of the original Outremer philosophy: a spartan catamaran which is simple, light and safe," so buyers chasing that stripped-down early character should look specifically at boats from that pre-2000 window, not just anything from the Danson years generally. Generation matters inside a single model name, too — the 45 nameplate kept changing hull length and structure well past its 2014 relaunch, so two boats sold a few years apart can differ meaningfully in both size and weight. Later models such as the 52 and the redesigned 55 lean further toward comfort, with wider glazing and more opening area than their predecessors.

What to inspect across the range

Outremer's own documented construction gives a useful map of what to check. The yard designs its daggerboards to break away first, acting, as SAIL Magazine put it, as "fuses" in an impact — worth tracing a board's history and checking its trunk for stress damage on any boat that's been sailed hard. Carbon reinforcement is concentrated in specific high-load areas rather than spread through the hull, so a surveyor should focus there rather than assume uniform layup across the boat. And because Outremer holds the hull layup to solid glass below the waterline specifically for grounding resistance, any repair below the waterline is worth tracing back to when and how it happened, rather than taken on faith. Given how much the 45 changed generation to generation, confirming exactly which build and update package a given hull carries is worth doing before comparing it against another listing with the same model number.

Navigating the lineup

Two broad currents run through the range: pure performance boats built light and stripped for speed, the 4X and 5X chief among them, and family-oriented cruisers such as the 49, 51, and 52 that trade some of that edge for interior volume and comfort. Buyers set on outright sailing performance should look toward the lighter, carbon-heavier end of the lineup; those wanting a bluewater family boat that still sails well are better served by the 49-to-52 line. The full model directory on this page breaks down the specific hulls within each.