Pacific sailboats for sale

Buying a used Pacific: confirm the lineage before you confirm the boat

A listing for a "Pacific" sailboat could be describing any of several unrelated boats built decades apart on different continents, so the first job for a buyer isn't judging condition - it's working out which Pacific this actually is. A New Zealand-built Pacific 38, or its Australian-badged sibling the Compass 38, is an offshore cruiser-racer from one small yard; a Cheoy Lee-built Pacific Clipper - more often found today under the name a San Francisco dealer gave it, the Frisco Flyer - is a Hong Kong-built Folkboat derivative; and a Pacific Dolphin is a licensed build of an American daysailer design. None of the three is related to Pacific Seacraft, a separate builder with its own lineup.

Which era to target

Within the Pacific 38 lineage, a hull's origin on either side of the mould export matters: the New Zealand-built boats from Smith's Boatyard came first, and the Australian-built Compass 38s that followed used a different lay-up hand. Within the Cheoy Lee lineage, the era matters even more to what's actually on board, since the three periods are materially different boats to inspect rather than points on one evolving design: an all-teak hull from the 1957-launch era, a fiberglass hull introduced in 1963 that still carries teak joinery above the waterline, and a later doghouse-cabin version whose mast lands on the deck rather than the cabintop. A stated model name is a starting point for verifying which of these a given listing actually is, not a guarantee.

What to inspect across the range

For the Pacific 38 and Compass 38 specifically, reviews in Boating New Zealand and Trade-A-Boat note some reported cases of minor osmosis across the lineage, though the same reviews found the design not particularly prone to blistering overall - worth a hull moisture check regardless of which side of the mould-export split a given hull came from. No comparable documented issue set exists for the other Pacific lineages in the record here.

Navigating the lineup

Size and mission split the three documented lines cleanly: the Pacific 38/Compass 38 is a substantial offshore cruiser-racer, the Cheoy Lee-built Pacific Clipper/Frisco Flyer is a small teak or fiberglass pocket cruiser derived from a Folkboat, and a Pacific Dolphin is a small licensed-build daysailer sharing its design with the wider Dolphin 24 fleet. Beyond those three, other Pacific nameplates span from a 14-foot one-design to a 65-foot yacht, credited to still other builders too thinly documented to characterize with confidence here. The full model directory on this page is the place to sort a specific listing into the right lineage.