Celestial 48 Sailboats for Sale

Layouts on the Used Market

The center cockpit layout pairs a forward V berth with an aft owner suite built around a king sized centerline bunk, while the saloon uses a centerline drop leaf table and L plus straight settees. Early hulls sacrificed settee width for storage behind them; later hulls opened the seating with angled backs. The U shaped galley to starboard and forward facing nav station to port bracket a passageway to a very large crawl in engine room, and aft heads include a separate shower. Because many owners requested different tank setups from the original 250 gallon fuel and 250 gallon water configuration, actual capacity on any individual boat should be verified rather than assumed.

Equipment and Common Upgrades

A few systems define the cruising value of a used Celestial 48. Watermakers are commonly fitted, often placed in the cabinet to starboard of the engine where the layout allows, and a bow thruster is likewise commonly fitted to aid close quarters given the skeg hung rudder and 27,000 pound mass. An EPIRB is commonly fitted for offshore signaling. Beyond those, the engine room already provides space for a small genset to port and an inverter or charger on the forward bulkhead, so energy expansion was designed in rather than improvised. Some owners have replaced teak decks with glass nonskid or added a cascading purchase for end boom mainsheet trim without a winch.

What to Inspect

The main mast step is the first worry: early boats used only a block of wood covered in fiberglass, and should the fiberglass skin fail and let moisture in, the step has likely rotted and made the rig unstable, so check the step closely because construction varied hull to hull anchor. Chainplate access is not easy, which complicates any rig inspection or future work. Osmotic blistering has been reported usually as a few spots on hull and rudder most smaller than a quarter, and an epoxy barrier coat helps as on similar vintage boats anchor. Scupper placement lets water miss the drains and pool about eight feet from the transom, a sign of chronic wet deck edges. A vinyl headliner looks tidy but blocks access to deck hardware, and the original forward led mainsheet leaves the helm without reach and has line friction with no convenient winch location.

Availability and Buyer's Takeaway

These boats appear in Italy, the United States, Australia, and France. For a shopper the short list is: confirm mast step condition and chainplate access, survey for osmotic spots and scupper pooling, verify actual tank capacity, and check whether a watermaker bow thruster or EPIRB is present. The Celestial 48 rewards a careful inspector with a thoughtfully laid out bluewater ketch whose faults are mostly accessible and known.