Raider sailboats for sale

Buying a used Raider: identify which lineage you're looking at first

A listing for a "used Raider sailboat" doesn't say much on its own -- the name has covered at least three unrelated designs across five decades, and confirming which one you're looking at should come before judging condition or price. One lineage is a small, self-righting daysailer built by Johannsen Boat Works in Vero Beach, Florida, to a design by John Drawe -- the Raider 16, Raider 16 Sport, and Raider II. A second, older and much thinner-documented lineage is the Raider 33, a keel sloop built in the late 1970s and early 1980s at a family boatyard on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River, to a design credited to naval architect John Cherubini. A third, the Raider 35, is an older 35-foot sloop from 1969 that belongs to neither lineage. None of the three shares a builder, designer, or era with the others, so a buyer comparing "Raiders" is really comparing three different boats.

Which era to target

Within the Florida-built line, the standard Raider and the upgraded Raider Sport were sold side by side, so the model name alone doesn't confirm which rig you're getting: the Sport carries a carbon spar and a DIAX/Dacron mainsail in place of the standard boat's two-piece aluminum mast, and it's worth confirming directly against the listing rather than assuming from the model name. The Raider II followed later, in 2011. On the New Jersey side, the Raider 33's production is documented as running from 1977 to 1983. Cherubini died in 1983.

What to inspect across the range

On the Florida-built boats, the builder told boats.com it had kept the transom as one integral piece with the hull and deck for added structural strength and crew security, and reported that its oversized cockpit drain tubes had proved effective in beach-launch testing in the surf at Daytona Beach -- both worth confirming are intact and unmodified on an older hull. The hull itself relies on flared sections filled with flotation, which SAILING Magazine credited with letting the boat come back upright on its own after a full knockdown; checking that this flotation hasn't degraded or been altered by a past repair is worth doing before buying.

Navigating the lineup

Start by identifying which of the three lineages a listing actually belongs to -- the Florida-built daysailer family, the New Jersey-built Raider 33, or the older Raider 35 -- since that single fact, more than the model number, determines the boat's size, era, and design pedigree. The full model directory on this page breaks down length and year within whichever lineage you're actually shopping.