AMF Sunfish Sailboat Review, Specs, and Listings

Design and Construction

The earliest Sunfish, built between 1952 and the mid-1960s, were plywood, but ALCORT produced the first fiberglass Sunfish in 1960 and the fiberglass fleet became the dominant line. The modern-day hull weighs 120 lbs, while the ALCORT hulls of the 1960s were built a little stouter at 139 lbs. What makes the boat forgiving is its virtually unsinkable pontoon hull: most fiberglass Sunfish contain six closed-cell expanded-polystyrene blocks, three in the bow and three in the stern, with the 2-inch-wide blocks held in place by marine-grade foam. Recent Sunfish have internal plastic air bladders for flotation instead. The boat's beam is 4 feet 1 inch and draft with the daggerboard down is 2 feet 11 inches; crew capacity is 500 lbs, with the optimal weight for a solo sailor up to 190 lbs. Newer hulls with their rolled gunwales are easier to handle on the beach.

Rig and Handling

The Sunfish carries a 75-square-foot lateen rig sail with a single sheet, its 13-foot 9-inch booms held aloft by a 10-foot aluminum deck-stepped mast, and the spars are made of anodized T 6061 aluminum. The sail hoists easily with one halyard that passes through a deck block or bullseye fairlead to a horn cleat, and the sheet runs from a bridle spanning the aft deck, through two boom blocks and back down to the cockpit. The original Sunfish had no sheet fairleads; a small open fairlead was later added to the cockpit lip — the "sheet hook" — and in the 1980s a swivel cam cleat was introduced, with today's boats usually sporting a ratchet block on a stand-up spring set just ahead of the cockpit. Sail controls for the recreational rig include outhauls for the upper and lower booms, while the racing rig adds extra lines to the lower boom controlling a cunningham for luff tension and another for foot tension.

The 44-inch-long daggerboard and foil-shaped rudder offer excellent control on all points of sail, and the daggerboards themselves grew through the years from 31 inches on the early wooden hulls to 39 inches for the fiberglass boats and then 44 inches for the latest racing daggerboard, with the newest ones foil-shaped. Rudder design evolved from a round blade to a spoon tip to the angular blade shape in use since 1971, and in that year the rudder system changed from a patented bronze rudder-releasing mechanism by Wilcox & Crittenden to an aluminum gudgeon, pintle, and spring design. The new system lets the sailor raise or lower the rudder while seated in the cockpit, and the rudder will kick up by itself for beaching or after striking an underwater obstacle. Sunfish behave admirably up to around 15 knots of wind, and if the wind dies you simply put the rudder down and the boat paddles well with a single-blade or kayak paddle. A Sunfish and its spars are cartoppable.

Accommodations and Equipment

This is a daysailer, not a cruiser, yet the cockpit refinements tell the story of steady evolution. Along with the 1971 rudder change, a storage cubby was added under the aft end of the cockpit. Around that same time the DePersia Venturi bailer went from aluminum to plastic; the bailer lets the cockpit self-drain when the boat makes even a few knots of headway and closes off with an internal float ball or plug inserted from inside. The foredeck carries a bow handle, and a hiking strap mounted close to the cockpit floor was another later upgrade. New boats can be ordered with either a mahogany or fiber-reinforced polymer rudder and daggerboard, while original tillers were wooden (usually ash) and modern ones are aluminum, straight or wishbone.

Known Issues

The Sunfish is a simple boat with few documented defects, but two construction-era facts matter to owners. The early wooden hulls (1952 to mid-1960s) preceded the fiberglass standard and are a different maintenance class entirely. On the fiberglass fleet, the rudder systems divide cleanly into the pre-1971 bronze Wilcox & Crittenden mechanism and the later aluminum gudgeon, pintle, and spring design — so a buyer mixing them invites a mismatch. The DePersia Venturi bailer's internal float ball or plug is what keeps the self-draining cockpit sealed when stationary; a missing or hardened plug defeats that closure.

Refits and Ownership

Because the fiberglass fleet shares common parts except at the rudder system breakpoint, a used Sunfish is remarkably easy to keep current. The sail itself tracked the material science of its era: original sails were cotton cut by Old Town, then when Dacron arrived Ratsey & Lapthorn became the sailmaker of choice and added a little extra draft to the foot of the original flat five-panel sail, and since 1979 Sunfish sails have been made by North Sails. The sail was originally lashed to the booms with cord and now uses plastic sail clips resembling shower curtain rings. AMF bought Alcort in 1969 and gave the Sunfish flashy hull graphics and multicolored sails; most boats from the 1970s through early 1980s were produced by ALCORT, a division of AMF, with as many as 60 a day leaving the Waterbury, Connecticut factory at peak. The manufacturer since 2007 has been Laser Performance, with hulls now built in Portugal after stints in the UK and a short period in China. The Sunfish was inducted into the American Sailboat Hall of Fame in 1995 as the "most popular fiberglass boat ever designed," and the class association formed in 1969 — since replaced by the International Sunfish Class Association — has kept major and informal races running everywhere.

The Verdict

The Sunfish is a rare thing: a boat whose 1952 concept survived essentially intact while its details refined toward easier handling and self-rescue. Its closed-cell foam or air-bladder pontoon hull makes it nearly unsinkable, its lateen rig is teachable in an afternoon, and its parts commonality across the fiberglass fleet keeps ownership cheap. The divisions that matter are the rudder system breakpoint of 1971 and the wooden versus fiberglass hull question — neither a flaw, just a classification the careful owner respects.

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