Sirius sailboats for sale

Buying a used Sirius: identify the builder before anything else

A used Sirius can come from either of two unrelated companies, and that distinction matters more than model, year, or condition when weighing risk. Germany's Sirius-Werft, based in Plön, has built continuously since the early 1970s across three generations of Schmidt family ownership, and has offered retrofit upgrades directly through the shipyard, such as a stern-extension kit for older 31 hulls. Canada's Vandestadt and McGruer, the Owen Sound builder behind the smaller Sirius 21, 22, and 28, went bankrupt at the end of 1988, undone by a 1984 plant fire on top of the era's steep borrowing costs, leaving no manufacturer to stand behind those hulls. Confirming which yard built a given boat is the first step; everything else about ownership, parts, and support follows from it.

Which era to target

On the German side, the clearest line runs through 1988, when the yard developed its deck-saloon concept, and 1991, when it built its last conventional sailing yacht. Boats from before that split — solid hand-laid hulls with balsa-cored decks, including the long-running 31 — are classic cruiser-racers rather than deck-saloon boats. The modern deck-saloon range effectively starts with the 35 DS in 2010, built to a different standard than those earlier hulls — a vacuum-adhered sandwich laid up above the waterline in one continuous mould. On the Canadian side, the entire production run is compressed into just over a decade, from the Sirius 21's 1976 debut through the 28's final orders in the mid-1980s, before the 1988 bankruptcy — there's no later generation to target, only a narrow build window to date a boat against.

What to inspect across the range

Several German-built models, including the 26, 31, 32 DS, and 38 DS, pair a solid-laminate hull with a balsa-cored deck. YACHT's used-boat test of the Sirius 31 is instructive for that shared deck construction: its testers flagged the teak deck's condition and possible leaks at points where earlier owners had cut through the balsa core for deck hardware, alongside checking engine age and centreboard function, while also noting the boat is not considered prone to osmosis. On a balsa-decked Sirius of any model, those same fitting penetrations are worth the same scrutiny.

Navigating the lineup

Size and layout aside, the biggest fork in the German lineup is classic sloop versus deck saloon — YACHT's own comparison testing has noted that sailing visibility through a deck saloon's raised cabin structure is more restricted than on a conventional coachroof, a tradeoff worth weighing against the extra headroom and light the deck-saloon layout buys. Buyers specifically interested in the Canadian-built 21, 22, or 28 are looking at a much smaller, simpler keelboat from a defunct yard rather than at any of the German range. From there, the full model directory on this page sorts every Sirius by size.