Windrider sailboats for sale

Buying a used Windrider: matching the hull to its ownership era

Windrider changed hands twice in its history — from a kayak company's spinoff, through a 2008 near-collapse and a hobbyist-retiree rescue, to a 2015 merger with Nickels Boat Works — and each ownership era left its mark on the boats themselves, not just the paperwork. Buying used here means treating a Windrider's ownership era as seriously as its model number: a 17 built before 2008 is not mechanically the same boat as one built after, and the RAVE hydrofoil is its own category entirely, a limited-production design that asks more of an owner than the trailerable trimarans do.

Which era to target

The original Wilderness Systems-era lineup — the 16 (reaching dealers in 1996), the 17 (introduced in 2002), and the compact 10, also sold as the Tango — represents Windrider's baseline trailerable-trimaran design, before the 2008 ownership change altered it. That change saw the new builders lengthen the 17's crossbeams for extra width and speed, which cost the boat its earlier capsize-resistant profile and its ability to telescope down to legal trailering width — worth confirming on any 17 from that era. The RAVE hydrofoil sits outside this timeline altogether: only 136 were built, between 1998 and 2003, before production halted, so a used RAVE is a specialist purchase in nearly every respect.

What to inspect across the range

On the 17, designer Jim Brown pointed to the fixed keel and non-kick-up rudder — a cost-saving design choice — as the source of mushy light-air performance and tricky surf launches; check whether a given hull carries the pre- or post-2008 crossbeam, since that affects both handling and trailer width. The 16 carries a low-buoyancy, wave-piercing bow that its own designer flagged as prone to diving at speed, a handling trait worth testing on the water rather than a fault a survey will catch. On the RAVE, the extruded foils rule out beach launching, according to boats.com's Perry Design Review, so plan around a proper haul-out rather than the trailerable trimarans' beach-launch convenience, and have the foil struts and retraction mechanism checked given how load-bearing they are to the design.

Navigating the lineup

For straightforward trailer sailing, the 10/Tango and 16 sit at the small end of the range and the 17 is the step up in size, all sharing the same telescoping-ama format; the RAVE stands apart as a hydrofoil built for speed rather than beach convenience. The full model directory on this page breaks out dimensions and era for each.