Thomas sailboats for sale

Buying a used Thomas: know whether you're buying a builder or a design credit

A "Thomas" listing rarely means what it looks like it means. Seven of the eight boats gathered under this name were built by two different companies - Hunter Boats Ltd of Essex, and Marine Projects of Plymouth for the Sigma range - to designs credited to British naval architect David Thomas. Only the Thomas 35 came from an actual company called Thomas Marine, a small American outfit with no relationship to either British yard. Before weighing condition or price on a used Thomas, the first question is which of these two stories the boat belongs to, since it determines who actually built the hull, what construction standards apply, and which owners' groups and parts networks exist to support it.

Which era to target

The David Thomas-designed boats span roughly two decades of British production. The Sonata, his first Hunter commission, anchors the deepest used pool in the lineup, with production running from the mid-1970s through 1990. The Sigma 33 offers a similarly deep pool, built across a run of about fifteen years, while the Hunter 707 arrived later, amid the mid-1990s sportsboat boom. On the genuinely American side, the Thomas 35 sits apart from all of it: a small-batch, contract-built boat from Tartan Marine rather than a high-volume British production run, so era comparisons that apply to the Hunter or Sigma boats don't transfer to it.

What to inspect across the range

Documented issues are model-specific rather than brand-wide, so match the inspection to the actual boat. On the Hunter 707, boats.com's Madforsailing test flagged that the lack of a backstay hurt forestay tension and pointing ability upwind, and could matter in handicap racing fleets; the same review noted that early boats had problems with a couple of rig fittings, since modified on later hulls. Practical Boat Owner's review of the Ranger 265, another Thomas-designed Hunter, found its outboard-motor option a less ergonomic arrangement than an inboard, and noted that an increasing number of owners have re-engined theirs with a larger twin-cylinder 14hp Beta.

Navigating the lineup

Beyond checking which company actually built a given hull, the range breaks into bands worth sorting by before comparing individual boats: small one-designs and sportsboats such as the Sonata, Impala 28, and 707 at one end; the larger cruiser-racer Sigma range at the other; and the unrelated American Thomas 35 as its own separate case entirely. The full model directory on this page is a better place to compare specific builders and years than the Thomas name alone.