Waarschip sailboats for sale

Buying a used Waarschip: judge the build, not just the badge

A used Waarschip is a hand-built, often partly owner-finished boat rather than a production hull off a line, so the usual brand shorthand goes only so far — two boats carrying the same model name can differ meaningfully in how they were built and finished, since the yard's kits and custom orders left real work, and real variation, in owners' hands. Buying here means weighing a boat's individual build and finish alongside its era and design lineage, not assuming consistency the way you might with a mass-production marque.

Which era to target

The earliest Waarschips, from the 1960s through the 1970s, were built from Bruynzeel marine plywood using the "overnaadse," or clinker/lapstrake, technique and commonly sold as kits, with the hull as the base and the rest left for the owner to finish — this is the era of the yard's original quarter- and half-tonne racers. From 1980, five-plank construction (introduced with the 740) gave hulls a more rounded shape than earlier boats in the line. More recent and custom builds move to wood-epoxy composite construction, with some smaller models using a wood-core bottom for lower resistance and easier upkeep; a custom build of this kind takes roughly a year to a year and a half from the yard. Knowing which construction era a given hull comes from tells a buyer more about what they're getting than the model number alone.

Navigating the lineup

Waarschip's range splits broadly into three bands: the early plywood-kit quarter- and half-tonners built for IOR handicap racing, a middle run of DIY-finish cruisers sized from under 20 feet to over 40, and newer, Peltzer-designed performance builds constructed to order in wood-epoxy composite. Because construction method shifted more across the marque's history than hull length did, buyers are better served sizing a Waarschip by build era and finish level than by model name alone — the full model directory on this page breaks the range down by year and length.