Tradewind sailboats for sale

Buying a used Tradewind: identify the builder before the boat

A listing that says "Tradewind" does not, by itself, say which boat it is. The name covers at least two, probably three, unrelated companies: an English-then-Dutch marque behind the Tradewind 33 and Tradewind 35, a long-defunct Costa Mesa, California company behind the Tradewinds 55, and the Tradewinds 47 and Tradewinds 28, which carry no confirmed link to either. Get the identification wrong and every downstream judgment — construction era, design pedigree, what kind of boat this actually is — ends up applied to the wrong company. The model number is the disambiguator: a 33 or 35 points to John Rock's design, built first in England and later in the Netherlands; a 55 points to a heavily reworked Bruce King hull built in tiny numbers in California; a 47 or 28 points to a company and design history that has not been documented at all. Settle that before weighing anything else.

Which era to target

A Tradewind 33 or 35 means John Rock's mid-1970s design, built in England before production moved to the Netherlands from 2000 onward; the 35 succeeded the 33 to address its weather helm. A Tradewinds 55 means something else again: a small run of Bruce King's Islander 55 hull, redesigned by naval architect Leif Beiley for a Costa Mesa buyer that had gone out of business by the early 1980s, so parts and support for that boat come from nowhere but the owner community. A Tradewinds 47 or 28 has no documented construction era at all — treat any claim about its origin with extra caution until it can be verified independently.

What to inspect across the range

The clearest inspection guidance applies to the 33 and 35 specifically. Yachting Monthly's review notes weather helm as a character flaw of the 33's design — the trait the 35 was built to address — and that quality and condition can vary because many 33s were sold as a kit or as a bare hull and deck for owner completion, rather than finished at the factory; how well, and by whom, a given hull was finished is worth establishing before anything else. The same review notes a bowsprit conversion to a cutter rig as a common upgrade aimed at reducing that weather helm, so it's worth asking whether a given boat has had one.

Navigating the lineup

With overlapping model numbers pointing to entirely different companies, sizing a Tradewind search starts with the builder rather than the length. The 33 and 35 offer the most continuous documented history and the largest built numbers of the group; the 55 is a scarce, one-off reworking of another builder's design from a shuttered yard; and the 47 and 28 carry model numbers without a builder record to check them against. The full model directory on this page breaks the range out for closer comparison.