Stevens sailboats: a Caribbean charter company that commissioned a flagship it didn't keep
Stevens Yachts began not as a boatbuilder but as a bareboat charter operation, and its signature 47-footer had a second life it never anticipated: sold along with its design rights to another builder, rebranded, and kept in production for years under someone else's name. The Sparkman & Stephens-designed Stevens 47, built by Queen Long in Taiwan, became the Hylas 47 in 1986 and then the Hylas 49 in 1991 - one of production sailing's clearer rebadge chains, and the thread running through everything else the marque built.
Origins and ownership
Bill Stevens' Caribbean charter business began after his Navy service, cruising the West Indies aboard the English Hillyard ketch Beloved Vagabond with his then-wife Barbara and taking paying guests to make money. Acting as charter agent for that boat and Gordon Stout's Stonington motorsailer, he became a motive force in the young eastern Caribbean charter industry by building standardized fleets instead of one-off boats. In 1970 he contracted Pearson Yachts to build to his specifications for the fleet, based in Grenada; when Pearson delayed him for a competitor, Stevens took the idea to Charlie Morgan, bringing along Moorings founder Charlie Cary - the result was the Morgan Out Island 41. He advised Gulfstar's Vince Lazzara on adapting the Gulfstar 50 for charter use and ordered ten of the modified boats in 1975. By the mid-1970s the fleet, which now included Peterson 44s, had moved from Grenada to St. Lucia after Grenada's newly won independence brought local turbulence.
The designers
Stevens' own flagship arrived through Queen Long, not a direct Stevens Yachts commission: in the late 1970s the Taiwanese builder was already producing Kelly Peterson 44s for Stevens' charter fleet when Queen Long, expanding its own business, asked Sparkman & Stephens for a new yacht whose design rights the builder itself would own. Rod Stephens drew the resulting 47-footer in 1981, reportedly inspired by Lazzara's Gulfstar 50, and later said the design proved fast yet remained a genuine cruising boat with full amenities. Stevens loved it and bought as many hulls as Queen Long could produce, branding them the Stevens (Custom) 47.
Construction through the eras
The 47's tall cutter rig measures just over 65 feet, giving both light-air performance and heavy-weather flexibility. Its engine sits well forward under the cockpit, weights centered away from the ends for an easier motion at sea. Unlike the Frers-designed Hylas models that came later, the Stevens/Hylas 47 carries an encapsulated internal lead ballast keel drawing a bit over 6 feet depending on load, and Stevens-branded hulls came with higher-grade deck hardware and a beefier rig than the Hylas-branded boats built from the same molds afterward.
Lines and generations
Queen Long built roughly 56 hulls under the Stevens name before Stevens Charters ran into financial trouble; the builder then rebranded the design the Hylas 47 in 1986 and built about 82 more. In 1991, Tony Seifert and Dick Jachney stretched the hull into the Hylas 49, enlarging the cockpit, adding two inches of freeboard, and fitting a sugar-scoop stern. Sparkman & Stephens also designed a larger sister, the Stevens 50 - Jordan Yacht Brokerage calls it one of the first true raised-saloon designs, often mislabeled a pilothouse - with a 40-foot sistership in the same line; the catalog also lists a Stevens 42, but no authority source documents who designed or built either boat.
Who Stevens is for
Stevens suits a buyer drawn to a documented design lineage rather than a single-builder history - someone willing to research whether a given 47-foot hull wears its original Stevens badge, its Hylas 47 relabeling, or the stretched Hylas 49 that followed, since the differences in hardware and hull shape between them are real.
