Island Packet 370/379 Sailboats for Sale

Layouts on the Used Market

Owner three-cabin layouts are the more common configuration found on the used market, though both arrangements circulate in brokerage. The three-cabin arrangement — forward owner's cabin, head with shower stall, saloon, aft cabin integrated with the navigation station — is particularly suited to couples making extended passages, and most boats turn up already set up for that kind of living. The forward island double berth is a genuine double, not the pizza-oven slot common on smaller production boats, and the aft offset double does useful duty as a sea berth when a lee board or divider is fitted. The nav station in the aft cabin is a sensible arrangement for offshore work, though it sits in a pass-through configuration rather than being fully integrated into the main saloon — worth noting if a buyer wants a dedicated chart room feel. The saloon itself is genuinely large for the waterline length, a consequence of Island Packet's high freeboard and wide beam, and stowage throughout is abundant in a way that repays a careful look-through before assuming you've found all of it.

Equipment and Common Upgrades

Used examples are typically well equipped for offshore voyaging, reflecting the owner profile the boat attracts. Autopilots, chartplotters, biminis, and dodgers are commonly fitted across the fleet — often as original equipment or early owner additions — and a short-handed setup (lines led aft, instruments at the helm, properly organised deck hardware) is the norm rather than the exception. Solar panels are a frequent owner upgrade, as are inverters, and most boats will carry radar and a bow thruster. Dinghy davits are widely seen, a natural choice given that these boats regularly live on the hook for extended periods. Furling mains — the in-mast roller-furling unit that was standard at delivery — appear on the majority of boats, with the trade-off in sail area and airfoil shape that implies; a buyer who wants a slab-reefing main should confirm what's fitted and budget accordingly if a conversion is planned.

Life rafts are often carried, frequently owner-supplied and of varying age — their certification status warrants specific attention at survey. Among the upgrades that appear on some but not all boats: air conditioning, heating systems, wind generators, AIS transponders, EPIRBs, asymmetric spinnakers, electric winches, dedicated freezers, and pressurised hot water. These additions tend to correlate with boats that have done extended offshore passages or lived aboard use; a boat with several of them is often priced to reflect that investment, and a buyer should evaluate each installation individually rather than treating the list as a pure bonus.

What to Inspect

The construction quality on these boats is genuinely high, and a surveyor familiar with Island Packet will spend less time on the hull and deck laminate than on boats of similar vintage from other builders. The hull-to-deck joint is bolted and bonded with urethane sealant, and the deck is cored with PolyCore — worth checking for any delamination or moisture intrusion around deck hardware penetrations, which are the typical entry points on any cored deck.

The engine space deserves careful attention. The Yanmar diesel lives deep in the keel sump — an excellent arrangement for stability, but one that makes access to filters, the drive shaft, and the stern gland notably cramped. A reviewer noted that the stern gland is buried deep under the aft bunk and can be difficult to reach, making deferred maintenance a real risk on a heavily used example. Confirm that routine service has actually been performed, not just assumed to have been, and budget time and patience for anything involving the shaft or stern gear. The bow thruster, where fitted, should be inspected for seal integrity and corrosion; these units see hard use on boats that spend time in marinas.

The in-mast roller-furling mainsail is standard equipment, and its condition is worth scrutinising carefully. In-mast furling systems can develop foil wear, line chafe, and UV degradation in the sail itself that isn't visible until the sail is unrolled fully — request a complete demonstration and inspect the entire sail surface. The staysail system, where fitted with the optional Hoyt Jib Boom, is a robust arrangement but has its own hardware to check for wear at the boom jaw and traveller.

Electrical systems on Island Packet boats are well-documented internally — messenger lines were run for future circuits at the factory — but years of owner additions can complicate the picture. Trace any additions carefully, and confirm that the ABYC-compliant original installation hasn't been compromised by aftermarket work. Keel-cooled refrigeration is a factory feature worth preserving; confirm the system is functional and that the keel cooling circuit hasn't been bypassed or neglected.

Availability and Buyer's Takeaway

The Island Packet 370 and 379 circulate widely across the United States brokerage market, with particular concentrations in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic where the builder's Florida base generated a loyal regional following. Boats also appear with some regularity in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Canada, Grenada, and Australia — a distribution that reflects both the voyaging ambitions the boat inspires and the fact that owners tend to actually use them for the passages they planned. The used market is not thin, but neither is it flooded; the builder's loyal community means owners hold boats longer than average, and well-maintained examples at fair values are worth pursuing with patience.

Before making an offer, work through this checklist:

• Verify in-mast furling main can be fully deployed and retrieved without binding; inspect the full sail surface for UV damage
• Confirm engine service history is documented, not inferred; physically inspect access to filters, shaft, and stern gland
• Check all deck hardware penetrations for moisture in the cored deck, especially around the mast base, chainplates, and stanchion bases
• Test the bow thruster under load if fitted
• Confirm life raft certification date and whether repack is current
• Inspect all owner-added electrical circuits for ABYC compliance and proper fusing
• Verify keel-cooled refrigeration is fully functional and the circuit is intact
• Check staysail boom jaw and traveller hardware for wear if the Hoyt system is fitted
• Confirm autopilot and chartplotter interfaces are functional and updated
• Ask whether the aft bunk has been removed to service the stern gland — and when