Mystery sailboats: a shared name, not a shared builder
There is no Mystery company. Boats carrying the name in this catalog come from unrelated builders working in different eras, and the useful answer for anyone searching "Mystery sailboats" is that the name is reused, not owned by a single marque. Two lineages are well documented: the modern, Bermudan-sloop-rigged Mystery 30 and Mystery 35 built by Cornish Crabbers, and a much older 1930s Mystery Class unconnected to them. A handful of other catalog entries carry the name too, with no independent source to explain who built them.
Origins and ownership
Cornish Crabbers, builder of the Mystery 30 and 35, was originally called Select Yachts and was based in Rock, North Cornwall. Before the company entered voluntary liquidation on 15 March 2024, it was owned by Peter Thomas and Samantha Thomas. A team led by Ben Walker of Blue Lagoon Marine subsequently bought the Cornish Crabbers brand, its intellectual property, and its production moulds — the Mystery 30/35 tooling among them — so the line's tooling passed intact through the change of hands. At the time of the liquidation, the production range spanned the Mystery 30 and 35 alongside the Shrimper 17, 19 and 21, the Crabber 24 and 26, and the Pilot Cutter 30.
The designers
The Mystery 30 was designed by David Thomas, whose son Peter later became owner and managing director of Cornish Crabbers. The Mystery 35 came from a different hand: Stephen Jones. The two credits are worth keeping separate, since it would be easy to assume one designer authored the whole series.
Lines and generations
Cornish Crabbers built the Mystery 30 and 35 as a Bermudan sloop-rigged pairing that sat apart from the yard's gaff-rigged Classic Series and Shrimper Series — a deliberate contrast within the same builder's range, per Classic Boat. Practical Boat Owner has reported that the Mystery 30/35 were regarded as out of sync with the classic, traditional Cornish Crabber range, a distinction that runs deeper than rig alone.
A separate, unconnected Mystery Class dates to the 1930s: the 39-foot (11.9m) yacht Cereste was designed by Robert Clark for that class, decades before Cornish Crabbers existed. The catalog also carries a further handful of boats under the name — a Mystery 26, Mystery 5.0, and Mystery 4.3 — for which no authority-tier source could be traced; treat them as separate from both lineages above until better documentation surfaces.
Who Mystery is for
A buyer drawn to the Mystery name should first work out which boat is actually in front of them. The Cornish Crabbers Mystery 30 and 35 suit sailors who want a Bermudan-rigged cruiser from a yard whose tooling survived a 2024 change of ownership intact; the 1930s Mystery Class belongs to an entirely different, much older tradition; and the remaining catalog entries are, for now, boats whose builder isn't documented well enough to say more.
