Trintella sailboats for sale

Buying a used Trintella: matching the hull to its era

A used Trintella is really a shorthand for several different boats built under one name. The 's-Hertogenbosch yard that carried it moved through steel, fiberglass, aluminum, and composite construction, changed hands more than once, went bankrupt twice, and eventually handed the name to an entirely new builder decades later. None of that makes any single Trintella a bad buy, but it does mean the badge alone tells a buyer less than it would for a brand with one continuous production run -- condition, construction method, and which chapter of the yard's history a given hull comes from matter more than the name on the transom.

Which era to target

The earliest boats -- the Trintel-derived Trintella I and Ia, more than 260 of which were built -- carry fiberglass hulls molded in England by Tyler Mouldings alongside mahogany interior joinery meant to echo the original wooden Trintel, and were the yard's best-selling design. The centre-cockpit III through V, with their distinctive "poop" deck, and the 1980s Flush Deck boats spanning the 38 to 53 came out of Van de Stadt's push for a sleeker, more modern hull as the decade demanded it. From the mid-1980s on, the "A" designation -- the 44A onward -- marks a deliberate switch to aluminum hulls after buyers grew wary of polyester osmosis, a reminder that these call for a survey suited to metal construction rather than the fiberglass boats elsewhere in the lineup. The composite C series and the 14.4-metre 47 monohull, both designed by Ron Holland and built in the yard's final years through 2002, are comparatively rare, with only a small run of C-series boats ever delivered. Separately, the Frers-designed 45, 50, and 60 built under the brand's post-2017 revival come from a different builder entirely, with modern vacuum-infused Corecell-and-carbon construction; shopping one of these is closer to buying a new boat than an old-yard classic.

Navigating the lineup

Broadly, the choice comes down to a few profiles: an early fiberglass Trintella I or Ia prized for its mahogany joinery and build numbers, a mid-era centre-cockpit or Flush Deck cruiser, a later aluminum A-series boat, or a rarer Ron Holland-era composite boat from the yard's final ownership stretch. The Frers-built revival boats sit apart from all three. The full model directory on this page breaks the range down by length and build years for closer comparison.