Santana sailboats for sale

Buying a used Santana: know which era and hull generation you're looking at

Santana isn't a company — it's W. D. Schock Corp's line of trailerable racer/cruisers, spanning nearly four decades from Gary Mull's Santana 22 to Steve Schock's water-ballasted Santana 2023. Buying used here means first placing a given hull within that lineage: which model generation it belongs to, and whether it predates or postdates a documented construction change, before weighing condition against the wear typical for its era.

Which era to target

The clearest generational line runs through the Santana 22. The original 1965 boat differs from the version W. D. Schock revived in 2001, an effort prompted by an order for six boats and built with input from existing owners; the remake stayed faithful to the original design principles even as it added stainless-steel chainplates in place of aluminum, a Harken traveler, a molded-in toe rail, a stronger hull/deck joint, a larger stern cutout sized for four-stroke outboards, and internally led halyards. It's worth knowing which side of that 2001 line a given hull falls on. The Santana 20 has its own dividing point: a 1996 deck redesign opened up the transom for a roomier cockpit without changing performance, so a pre-1996 hull isn't giving anything away on the racecourse — the difference from a newer boat is comfort, not competitiveness. And a Santana 23 is a different boat from a Santana 2023 despite the shared hull: Turner's late-1970s original carried a conventional fixed-keel setup, while Steve Schock's early-1990s remake swapped in water ballast and a centerboard, changing how the boat handles and trailers as much as how it's built.

What to inspect across the range

On the Santana 2023, the company has attributed mast spreader-bar weld failures to vibration from trailering, since two mast sections were cut and welded together — worth a close look at any welded joint in the mast. Early Santana 2023 boats also carried undrained water ballast that caused rot where the tank sole met the hull; W. D. Schock modified the tank design on later boats, so check drainage and repair history on early hulls. On the Santana 22, reviewers have flagged the original aluminum chainplates — which tend to elongate and corrode over time — along with an undersized boom section prone to failure under load, an undersized gooseneck fitting, and rudder play tied to bearing support in the fiberglass rudder tube; a boat that's had the stainless-steel chainplate upgrade is worth confirming. On early Santana 23 D hulls, the keel trunk was moved about four inches aft, around hull number 85, to reduce the weather helm transmitted to the helmsman — a detail worth asking about on boats built before that change.

Navigating the lineup

The Santana catalog runs from the 20-foot Santana 20 up to the 39-foot Santana 39, with one-design trailerable racer/cruisers concentrated in the low-20s to high-20s and longer-legged cruiser-racers like the 35 and 37 at the top of the range. Someone weighing a Santana 22 or 2023 against a Santana 30 or 35 is really choosing between an easily trailered pocket racer with an active one-design fleet and a bigger, less trailerable cruiser-racer — worth settling before comparing specific hulls on the full model directory on this page.