Wibo sailboats for sale

Buying a used Wibo: a family yard's steel series, not a brand you'll find twice

A used Wibo isn't a boat from a shipyard called "Wibo" — it's a steel cabin sailboat from the Woubrugse Jachtwerf G. van Wijk en Zoon, a single family yard in Woubrugge, Netherlands, built under a series name rather than a company name. Buyers relying on aggregator listings that cite a builder called "Wibo Yachts" are working from a misattribution; the yard's own history and its designers' own design-office records agree that "Van Wijk" is the actual builder behind every Wibo. Judging a used Wibo means judging it as one entry in a single yard's long steel-boat output, not as a product of a marque with a separate identity of its own.

Which era to target

The earliest Wibos, including the 830 dated from 1969, predate any documented outside designer; the Van Wijk yard built them using the steel methods it had followed since early in the century, without a credited naval architect on record. From the Wibo 930 in 1972 onward, E. G. van de Stadt's design office has its own documented involvement, and the firm's own list of designs traces further Wibo models — the 820, 835, 945, 1050 MS, and 1100 — across the 1970s and into the mid-1980s. A buyer weighing an early, undated-design Wibo against a later, van de Stadt-credited one is choosing between two genuinely different design provenances, even though both carry the same series name and steel construction.

Navigating the lineup

The models actually listed span the 27-foot 830 through the 32-foot-plus 990, with the 930 in between — a size range that also tracks the split in design credit, since the smaller, earlier 830 predates van de Stadt's documented involvement and the 930 doesn't. Buyers sizing a boat should weigh that design-era split alongside length, rather than treating the range as one continuous product line — the full model directory on this page breaks it down by year and length.