Thomas 707 Buyer's Guide
Shopping a used Hunter 707 means looking at a David Thomas design that Hunter Boats built from 1995 onward as the club racer's sportsboat of choice, with over 120 afloat and strong one-design fleets in the Solent, Hamble, Burnham and Scotland. She is a 23-foot fixed-keel planing boat whose low original price still underwrites a lively secondhand market among fleet racers rather than cruising couples.
Layouts on the Used Market
The 707 keeps almost all the deck aft of the mast as cockpit, so every used example you meet will be a vast open steering and crew space for her length, with the forward hand working the foredeck instead of the coach roof. Below, the interior is stark and functional — bonded-in floors, plywood bulkheads and bunk fronts, built to keep cost and weight down rather than to charm. Four or five crew sail her comfortably, and the boat feels bigger than she is when you step down, so judge accommodation by race utility, not by cruiser standards.
Equipment and Common Upgrades
The defining factory item is the outboard well: the engine and bracket stow below the cockpit floor while racing, and the change to motoring is safe and clean, with sculpted foot-chocks letting the locker cover seat properly. Fleet demand produced a high-quality deck gear package of Harken and Spinlock fittings from the first boats, and testers saw no need for expensive upgrades there. The Sobstad Mylar sails hold shape far better than soft Dacron, so a used boat's sail inventory matters more than deck hardware. Symmetry is the rig's identity — a conventional pole and symmetrical spinnaker, not an asymmetric setup, which is why she can outrun asymmetrically rigged rivals in tight waters.
What to Inspect
The missing backstay is the one design compromise to understand: without it, the rig could not be bent to flatten the main when sailing upwind in a breeze, and test sailors held that it hurt forestay tension and pointing, a real issue in handicap racing even if one-design fleets ignored it. Check early boats for the rig fitting problems that were later modified, and confirm any example carries the Harken and Spinlock deck gear the association specified. The fixed keel brings improved structural integrity and avoids lifting-mechanism maintenance — inspect the cast iron keel with slender foil and modest bulb for grounding damage. A minor item is the absence of cleats to keep spinnaker sheets out of the water upwind — easy to add.
Availability and Buyer's Takeaway
Fleet concentration sits in the Solent, with big groups also in Hamble, Burnham and Scotland and area championships encouraging countrywide ownership. For the buyer, the short checklist is: confirm the fixed keel is sound and unmodified, verify the Harken/Spinlock deck gear is intact, check the Mylar sails for shape retention, and accept the backstay-less rig as a one-design virtue rather than a defect unless you plan handicap racing. A well-kept 707 is a bulletproof, cheap-to-run club racer with a supportive owners' network.
Price & volume trends
Monthly asking-price and listing-volume trends for the Thomas 707. The line shows the median ask each month; the bars show how many listings appeared.
Monthly breakdown · 4 rows
| Month | Listings | Median ask | Δ vs. last mo. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 25 | 1 | $13,197 | — |
| Dec 25 | 1 | $12,164 | -7.8% |
| Feb 26 | 1 | $6,835 | -43.8% |
| Aug 26 | 1 | $7,993 | +16.9% |
Where they're listed
Thomas 707 listings appear across 2 countries. Germany has the most listings with 3 (75.0%), followed by United Kingdom.
Country view
4 listings · 2 countries| Country | Median ask | Listings · 12 mo | Active · 90 d | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | $7,993 | 3 | 1 | 75.0% |
| United Kingdom | $13,197 | 1 | 0 | 25.0% |