Wasa sailboats for sale

Buying a used Wasa: continuity of ownership behind a small, varied range

A used Wasa comes from a yard that has never changed hands: the same man who started it, Hans Marklund, still runs it alongside Tommy Planeryd. That continuity doesn't stand in for inspection, though. Wasa built in relatively small runs -- the flagship 55 reached 67 examples, and most later models numbered in the dozens or single digits -- so an individual hull's condition and build history will tell a buyer more than the model name alone.

Which era to target

Wasa's one-piece hull molding, without a center seam, dates from the Wasa 55 onward, a construction change the yard says adds strength against groundings and other heavy loads -- a useful line to draw between the earliest boats and everything that followed. The IOR and IMS racing rules split the middle of the range in two: the Wasa 38 answered IOR directly and suits a buyer chasing a lighter, race-bred hull, while the Wasa 41 came after the switch to IMS with a balsa-cored, Twaron-reinforced hull and an ABS certificate meant for offshore racing categories zero through two -- a heavier documentation trail worth asking for. The Wasa 34 also has two distinct builds worth telling apart: hulls produced at Vordingborg Yachts in Denmark from autumn 1985 on, and a separate racer/cruiser version WASA Marin kept building in Södertälje for the Swedish market -- confirm which one a given boat is before assuming its specification.

Navigating the lineup

The range spans a 28-foot entry boat, the 270, built in small numbers into the mid-1980s, up to the 53-foot 530 at the top. In between, the 38 and 41 carry the strongest racing pedigree for a buyer prioritizing that history, and the Atlantic represents the yard's narrow, low-displacement offshore-cruising concept taken to its fullest. The full model directory on this page breaks out each one's own production window and dimensions.