RS sailboats for sale

Buying a used RS: matching category to construction before condition

Buying a used RS boat means buying into a category as much as a hull. The brand spans racing skiffs, roto-molded training dinghies, catamarans and small keelboats, built under an outsourced-production model where RS selects the materials and manufacturer that fit each boat rather than running one factory process across the range. That makes category fit — racer, training program, family day-sailing — the first filter for a used buyer, ahead of any specific hull's condition. Because each racing class also runs its own independent Class Association handling rules and events, buying into a given RS class means buying into an existing racing and training scene for that boat, not just acquiring a hull.

Which era to target

Two very different builds sit under the same brand. Boats aimed at sailing schools and family use — the Feva, Zest and Cat 16 among them — are rotomolded in polyethylene, a material chosen to shrug off years of hard beach use rather than shave grams. The racing singlehanders are a different animal: the RS100 pairs a composite epoxy hull with carbon spars and foils, built for stiffness and speed rather than abuse. Know which category a listing falls into before judging its condition by the standards of the other — dings that would sideline a race boat are business as usual on a training hull. The lineup has also kept absorbing outside classes: the independently run 2000 Class Association voted, in a committee vote held in April 2026, to adopt RS's branding into its own class identity, a reminder that a boat's RS badge doesn't always mean it was designed in-house from the outset.

What to inspect across the range

RS's open-cockpit designs — boats with little or no cabin, built to maximize crew space — have drawn similar notes from testers on more than one model. On the RS400, boats.com found the cockpit isn't truly self-draining. On the RS21 keelboat, 48° North's testers reported that digging a wave could send water through the cockpit despite its cutout, all-cockpit layout. Neither is a defect so much as a tradeoff of the open, minimal-cockpit style RS favors across much of the range, but it's worth confirming in a sea trial rather than assuming from a listing photo.

Navigating the lineup

The lineup splits roughly into four groups: racing skiffs and singlehanders (RS400 through RS800, RS100, RS200 and RS300), roto-molded training and recreational dinghies (Feva, Zest, Neo, Tera, Toura), catamarans (Cat 14 and Cat 16), and small keelboats (RS Elite, RS21). A buyer set on club racing should look first at fleet strength for the specific class in their area; a buyer after a family or training boat should lean toward the polyethylene models built for that use. The full model directory on this page breaks each of those groups down further.