Twister sailboats for sale

Buying a used Twister: era and finishing yard matter as much as the badge

A Twister is a single design, but a used listing under that name could be any one of several different boats: a 1960s wooden hull, a mid-1960s composite build with a glass hull and timber cabin top, or a later all-glass boat built well into the Tyler Boat Company's final production years. The Twister also passed through more than one finishing yard over its life — J.W. & A. Upham of Brixham completed the majority, but other yards fitted out boats too, and a meaningful share were finished at home by their own owners from a bare hull-and-deck kit. That means condition on any given boat has as much to do with who finished it, and who has maintained it since, as with the Twister name itself; a carefully finished amateur build can be a better buy than a neglected yard boat of the same age.

Which era to target

The oldest boats are wooden — several dozen were built, with accounts putting the number between 30 and 40 — and predate Tyler's GRP tooling entirely. The first GRP Twisters, from the mid-1960s, weren't all-glass: timber stayed above the waterline, on the cabin top and in the cockpit, while only the hull and deck moved to fibreglass, so the wood-maintenance questions that come with an older boat don't disappear just because the hull is glass. An all-glass version, which removed that remaining wood, debuted in 1969 and became the standard for the rest of the run. Tyler also kept producing hulls long after most Twisters were built, into the late 1990s, so a late-built boat can be considerably younger than its overall design generation suggests — worth confirming rather than assuming from the class name alone. Badges read "Tufglass 28" or "Tyler 28" on some GRP boats; both are the same Twister under Tyler's alternate marketing names, not a different model.

What to inspect across the range

One buyer's guide to the class flags deck core issues, chainplate knees, rudder fittings, and ageing systems as the recurring maintenance concerns worth checking across the range. The composite-era boats carry a specific version of that risk: their decks were marine plywood sheathed in GRP rather than solid glass, so moisture that has found its way into the wood beneath is worth checking for on any boat from that window. The chainplate mounting point itself changed partway through production, moved in a little from an original, more exposed layout with added reinforcement around it on later hulls — worth a closer look on any earlier boat that may predate the change. And because part of the fleet started life as an owner-completed kit rather than a yard-finished boat, fit-out quality is worth assessing on its own terms rather than assumed from the Twister name.

Navigating the lineup

With effectively one hull design across the run, navigating the Twister lineup means weighing construction era and finishing history rather than choosing between related models or size bands. The full model directory on this page groups boats by these distinctions for closer comparison.