Stevens sailboats for sale

Buying a used Stevens: a charter-fleet name that outlived its own badge

A used Stevens is really a bet on which chapter of one 47-foot design you're buying. Bill Stevens built his charter business by demanding standardized fleets rather than one-off boats, and the Sparkman & Stephens flagship he commissioned through builder Queen Long went on to a second and third life as the Hylas 47 and Hylas 49 - which means the model name on the transom matters less than which generation of that hull it actually is.

Which era to target

About 56 of these hulls left Queen Long under the Stevens badge before money trouble at Stevens Charters ended that run; the yard kept building the identical hull as the Hylas 47 for roughly 82 more boats, then reworked it into the longer-cockpit, higher-freeboard Hylas 49 starting in 1991. Knowing which of the three names is actually on a listing - not just the length - tells you which generation of hardware and layout you're looking at. Deck hardware and rig scantlings also stepped down somewhat when the badge changed from Stevens to Hylas, so a Stevens-branded hull built from the same molds can be the stouter boat of the two. That 47/49 lineage is also where Stevens' documented history concentrates; the catalog's Stevens 40, 42, and 50 have far thinner paper trails, so expect to do more of your own legwork on those.

What to inspect across the range

A 47 or 49's ballast sits in an encapsulated lead keel drawing roughly six feet, not the underbody Frers used on later Hylas models - confirm that before assuming later-era gear applies to an older hull. The skeg-hung rudder rides on three bearings, with the lowest one set well above the skeg's heel specifically to keep it from jamming in a hard grounding - worth checking closely on any hull with grounding history. Many Stevens 47s have been refit at the Bennett Brothers yard, associated with Stevens' original charter operation, which can be a useful thread when tracing a boat's service record.

Navigating the lineup

Buyers set on the 47-foot hull should treat "Stevens" versus "Hylas" branding, and Hylas 47 versus Hylas 49, as three distinct generations of the same design rather than interchangeable listings. Buyers drawn to the smaller Stevens 40 or 42, or the raised-saloon Stevens 50, are working with far less documented history and should lean more heavily on a surveyor than on brand paperwork. The full model directory on this page breaks out the size and year range of each.