Trident sailboats for sale

Buying a used Trident: know which Trident you're looking at first

Before weighing condition or fit, a Trident buyer has to answer a more basic question: which Trident is this? At least three unrelated companies built boats under the name -- a British yard behind a compact 1960s pocket cruiser, a separate Hampshire builder behind a larger pilothouse range, and a French yard that built a coastal cruiser under the same four letters -- and nothing about the name itself tells you which one you're looking at. The risk asymmetry is real: these boats differ in size, build method, and sailing character by as much as any three unrelated makes would, so confirming the builder before comparing price or condition matters more than it would for almost any other name in the model directory.

Which era to target

If it's a Trident 24, the era question is really a fit-out question: about two-thirds of the roughly 250-plus built left the yard as home-completion kits, and the very earliest examples had wooden decks and coach roofs fitted to the GRP hull by hand, so age alone won't tell you how a given boat was finished. If it's a Voyager, Warrior, or Challenger, the design lineage splits in the early 1980s, when Angus Primrose's earlier solo work gave way to boats co-designed with Bill Dixon -- worth asking about when shopping a specific hull. A Trident 80 sidesteps the question entirely: S.M.A.P.-Neptune kept the design unchanged across its full 15-year run, so there's no earlier or later version to weigh against another.

What to inspect across the range

On a Trident 24, engine provenance is the first thing to check: most of the original Vire engines have been swapped out over the decades, with a compact Yanmar 9hp diesel a particularly common and well-regarded replacement, so confirm what's actually installed rather than assuming the original power plant. Kit-finish quality is the second variable, since so many hulls were completed by their original owners rather than the yard. On a Warrior or Challenger, sailing character is the inspection point that matters most: Yachting Monthly credits the long keel and modest rig with excelling in heavy weather, but the same combination makes for undemanding, unexciting sailing in lighter conditions -- worth test-sailing before assuming it matches how you actually sail. A Trident 80's hull and deck were laid up as a monolithic glass-polyester laminate with an iron keel in either a deep or shallow configuration, so confirming which keel option a given boat carries is worth doing against your home harbour's depth.

Navigating the lineup

Size and sailing style split cleanly along builder lines here: the Trident 24 for a compact, budget-minded pocket cruiser with an active owners' community; the Voyager, Warrior, or Challenger family for a larger, heavy-weather-capable cruiser in the 30-to-40-foot range; and the Trident 80 for a simply built French coastal sloop. The full model directory on this page breaks the range down by builder, length, and year once you know which lineage you're shopping.