Standfast sailboats for sale

Buying a used Standfast: one designer, one yard, a documented ownership history

A used Standfast is, more than with most brands, a bet on one man's design work: Frans Maas designed the range himself for his family's Breskens yard, and boats built under his hand share that single-designer pedigree rather than a committee's. That consistency is also the thing to verify -- the business changed hands more than once over the decades, and the model numbers span a designer's evolving practice across those years, so a boat's actual build year and design lineage matter more here than the brand name alone.

Which era to target

Frans Maas's design work traces back to at least 1971, when he began tank-testing hulls at Delft -- work that fed into the IMS VPP and gives the earliest Standfast designs an unusually well-documented technical pedigree for a small yard. The Standfast name itself only dates to 1973, when Jaap Maas handed the business to his son alongside the rename; anything genuinely built as a "Standfast" postdates that year. A further boundary worth knowing: in 2008, after setbacks under the original Maas-family ownership, the company changed hands to Breskens Yacht Service -- worth noting because it marks where continuity in records and support may break.

Navigating the lineup

Alongside the Standfast line itself, the yard built the smaller Loper -- described by its own builder as a small Standfast, and produced in around 120 examples, making it one of the range's more common finds. Don't assume a shared model number means a shared design: a hull Frans Maas called the "Standfast 43" was tank-tested as early as 1971, well before other boats later carrying that same model number, so confirm a specific listing's actual build year and design rather than reading the number alone. The full model directory on this page sorts the rest of the range for buyers working by size and era rather than name.