Scanmar sailboats for sale

Buying a used Scanmar: a closed production run, not an ongoing brand

A used Scanmar is a fixed inheritance: the Swedish yard behind the line went bankrupt in 1991, so there's no factory, dealer network, or ongoing model line standing behind the boats still on the water. Buying one means evaluating a specific, decades-old hull on its own condition and documented history rather than trading on brand continuity — and being alert that a similar name doesn't always mean the same builder: the later Scanyacht and Scanner-branded designs from the same lead designers are a separate, distinct lineage, not later Scanmars.

Which era to target

The line grew from a smaller mid-1970s model into a run of larger boats by 1991, and the hulls changed materially along the way. On the 33, 31, and 35, expect a solid fiberglass laminate — cast iron ballast on the 31 and 35 specifically — rather than anything cored. That changes with the 345, introduced in 1987: its hull and deck are cored, sandwich construction, finished out with mahogany joinery below, a different build than anything earlier in the range. A hull's era, in other words, tells a buyer more than its model number does.

What to inspect across the range

Ballast material is one detail worth confirming rather than assuming from a listing: the 31 and 35 both carry iron keels, and a surveyor should verify condition directly. The 345's cored hull and deck panels are also worth a close look, given how different that build is from the solid-laminate boats earlier in the line, and the 40, from the same later stretch of production, adds teak decking and bulkheads glassed directly to hull and deck — both worth inspecting closely before purchase.

Navigating the lineup

The six models span a size range of roughly seventeen feet, from the smallest early boat up to the 40-foot flagship, and production numbers varied sharply between them — the 33 was comparatively common at several hundred hulls built, while the 40 saw only a couple of dozen built in total. That scarcity gap is worth weighing alongside size and era preferences; the full model directory on this page breaks the range down further.