Bi-Loup 9 Buyer's Guide
The Bi-Loup 9 is a 29-foot French masthead sloop that Wrighton Yachts built in France from 1979 through 1988, with only 30 completed. She is a solid-fiberglass twin-keel boat drawn by Richard Wrighton, and on the used market she appears rarely enough that any purchase is a study in one-off condition rather than fleet norms.
What to Inspect
A buyer's walkaround centers on confirming the boat matches her stated light-racer character rather than hunting a known weakness. Verify the twin-keel solid-glass hull for honest repair history, since the 950 kg iron ballast and 2,800 kg displacement put her among the lighter 10 percent of similar designs and any added ballast or bogus "improvement" would move the numbers. Check that the masthead rig and sheet inventory match the period spec — jib and genoa sheets run 9.0 meters in 10 mm diameter, the mainsheet is 22.5 meters of 10 mm line, and spinnaker sheets are 19.8 meters at 10 mm — because a missing or undersized mainsheet is a real handling risk on a 25.9-square-meter rig. Confirm draft sits in the 0.90 to 1.00 meter band dependent on load, the figure that defines her shallow-water appeal.
Availability and Buyer's Takeaway
With only 30 built the boat is scarce wherever she turns up, and a prospective owner should expect to search broadly and wait for a hull to appear rather than choose among several listings at any moment. The twin-keel configuration and solid-glass construction mean a surveyor familiar with older French production boats is worth engaging, since class-specific knowledge is thin. A short buyer checklist:
- Confirm hull is solid fiberglass with no undisclosed ballast additions
- Measure draft at rest to verify 0.90–1.00 meter range
- Match sheet lengths and diameters to masthead-rig spec
- Review any refit history against the 1979–1988 build window