Young Sun sailboats for sale

Buying a used Young Sun: verify the badge before you verify the boat

A used Young Sun is a rare find - a Taiwanese cutter yard from the late 1970s whose own founding is documented so thinly that even its history gets passed along secondhand. That scarcity cuts both ways: there's less written record to lean on before a survey, but also a genuinely small, well-defined range rather than a sprawling lineup with reputation to sort through.

Which era to target

Young Sun's production ran only a few years around 1978 to 1980, and its flagship design didn't end there. Once the "Young Sun" name proved a hard sell in the US market, that same hull went on being built as the Spindrift 43 out of the Formosa Boat Builders yard, and other related hulls circulated under still other names in the years that followed - so a listing search limited to "Young Sun" alone will miss boats built from the same underlying design. A buyer comparing listings across those names should weigh them as the same lineage rather than assume the Young Sun badge alone marks the "authentic" boat.

What to inspect across the range

The 43's original cockpit and mast winches came from Custom Yacht and Cathay Industrial; a Yachtworld review notes that both companies may no longer be in business, so replacement parts for the original hardware could be hard to source - worth confirming with a current owner or surveyor before counting on it for offshore work.

Navigating the lineup

The range comes down to two boats: the 43, offered in center cockpit or pilothouse configurations and the marque's line-defining cutter, and the 35, its smaller "little sister" whose design credit is frequently misreported and worth double-checking against a seller's claims rather than taking a stated pedigree at face value. The full model directory on this page breaks out both by year and length.