Dufour Sylphe Buyer's Guide
Shopping the used market for a Dufour Sylphe means chasing a piece of French sailing history. Michel Dufour's first design, built by Le Stratifié Industriel in the mid sixties with several hundred completed, is a 6.54-meter masthead sloop whose broad beam and bulb fin keel still read as unconventional for its day anchor. These are coastal racer-cruisers, not volume boats, and the buyer is acquiring a light-displacement hull with an iron keel and solid fiberglass construction throughout.
Layouts on the Used Market
Every Sylphe shares the same essential footprint: a 21-foot fiberglass hull with headroom below average for the class and a beam that was considered too wide to be fast when new. The fin keel with bulb draws roughly 3.44 to 3.74 feet loaded, so most examples will slip into shallow marinas that exclude deeper keelboats. Below, the plan is minimal — a weekender's shelter rather than a cruising home — and the 15-gallon water capacity underscores the coastal intent. There is no variation in layout to speak of across the production run; what differs boat to boat is the state of the original fiberglass and the owner-installed auxiliary.
Equipment and Common Upgrades
The defining equipment theme is propulsion and sail handling. An outboard of 3 to 4 horsepower is the standard docking and maneuvering installation, with 60 to 72 pounds of thrust as the electric alternative, and a spinnaker is commonly fitted to exploit the boat's overrigged sail plan anchor. Beyond that, most other gear on offered boats is owner-supplied rather than period standard, so a buyer should assess the outboard mount, spinnaker gear, and running rigging condition rather than expect a uniform inventory.
What to Inspect
The known structural facts are reassuring but worth verifying. Both hull and deck are solid fiberglass, and the keel is iron — so check the bulb and stub for rust staining or delamination at the joint, since iron ballast embedded in a fiberglass fin is the most likely corrosion path on a fifty-year-old example anchor. Confirm the hull-to-deck interface is sound and look for any repair from groundings given the shallow draft that invites them. Inspection should center on age-related degradation of the original composite and the iron keel rather than systemic design faults.
Availability and Buyer's Takeaway
The typical market for these boats is the United Kingdom, where examples surface through brokerage and private sales without predictable frequency. For the buyer, the checklist is short: verify iron keel condition and hull-deck joint integrity, confirm a serviceable 3 to 4 hp outboard or electric equivalent, check the spinnaker gear if fitted, and accept below-average headroom as the trade-off for that landmark wide-beamed hull.
Price & volume trends
Monthly asking-price and listing-volume trends for the Dufour Sylphe. The line shows the median ask each month; the bars show how many listings appeared.
Monthly breakdown · 1 row
| Month | Listings | Median ask | Δ vs. last mo. |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 26 | 1 | $2,037 | — |
Where they're listed
Dufour Sylphe listings appear across 1 country. United Kingdom has the most listings with 1.
Country view
1 listings · 1 country| Country | Median ask | Listings · 12 mo | Active · 90 d | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | $2,037 | 1 | 0 | 100.0% |
Comparable models
Similar length, displacement, and era. Open a row to compare that model's market page.
Similar boats to compare
2 similar designs| Model | LOA | Median ask | Listings · 12 mo | Active · 90 d |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dufour 24 | 24.1' | $ 9,086 | 12 | 2 |
| Dufour SylpheYou are here | — | $ 2,037 | 1 | 0 |