Rhodes sailboats for sale

Buying a used Rhodes: know which yard actually built the hull

"Rhodes" on a listing names the designer, Philip L. Rhodes, not the builder. His design office never built a boat itself; over four decades its drawings were turned into hulls by Coleman Boat and Plastics, Pearson, O'Day, Stuart Marine, Cape Cod Shipbuilding, General Boats, and other yards, each working in a different era and often a different material. A used "Rhodes" can mean a 1930s wooden one-design, a pioneering-era fiberglass cruiser, or a trailerable 1960s daysailer. Before weighing condition or price, the first job is identifying which yard built the specific hull, and when - the badge tells you the design lineage, not the construction.

Which era to target

The clearest era split runs through the Bounty II and Pearson Rhodes 41 - the same mold, split by a change of ownership. A hull from the Sausalito, California yard that opened production in 1956 is a Coleman/AeroMarine-era Bounty II; anything sold under Grumman-backed Pearson came later, once Pearson took over the tooling in 1961 and ran it only until 1968, turning out roughly 50 boats total. A listing that just says "Rhodes 41" or "Bounty II" is describing two different production runs from two different owners, and the specifics worth confirming - window count, engine position, freeboard - shifted between them.

The Rhodes 19 has a comparable split, on a longer clock. Anything built before 1980 came off George O'Day's line, which held the design from 1958 until a cost squeeze and a weak economy ended the run. Everything since 1984 has come from Stuart Marine, a company a Rhodes 19 racer started for no other reason than to keep the class alive, building on tooling a Marblehead naval architect developed for the purpose. Small Boats Magazine has quoted a class sailor's view that the earlier O'Day boats hold up well enough to be brought back to full competitive trim, so age alone shouldn't rule a hull out - but knowing which era's boat is on offer still changes what a survey should look for.

Navigating the lineup

The Rhodes catalog spans small one-designs like the Rhodes 18 and Rhodes 19, a trailerable cruiser in the Rhodes 22, a Netherlands-built offshore cruiser in the Swiftsure 33, and the one-off 12 Metre pedigree behind Weatherly - each with its own builder, era, and intended use rather than a shared production line. Rather than shopping the Rhodes name broadly, use the full model directory on this page to narrow to a specific model, builder, and year, then evaluate that hull on its own terms.